The Computer History Museum’s mission is:
“to preserve and present for posterity the artifacts and stories of the Information Age.”
Opened in Mountain View, CA, in 2003, the museum is a nonprofit organization seeing themselves as “the world’s leading institution exploring the history of computing and its ongoing impact on society. The Museum is dedicated to the preservation and celebration of computer history and is home to the largest international collection of computing artifacts in the world, encompassing computer hardware, software, documentation, ephemera, photographs, oral histories, and moving images.”
The public is encouraged to use the museum’s documents and collections for research activities. There are manuals, books, marketing brochures, periodicals, technical reports and other types of documentation, accessible via more than 20,000 catalog entries.
The history of the museum is a varied struggle for survival in the early years with changes of its name reflecting the ups and downs. (The following statements are largely taken from Wikipedia.)
The museum’s origins date back to 1968 when computer pioneer and entrepreneur, Gordon Bell, began a quest for a historical collection and, at that same time, others were looking to preserve the MIT “Whirlwind” computer. The resulting Museum Project had its first exhibit in 1975, located in a converted coat closet in a lobby of Bell’s Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). In 1978, the museum took on the name The Digital Computer Museum (TDCM), and moved to a larger DEC lobby in Marlborough, MA.
TDCM incorporated as The Computer Museum (TCM) in 1982. In 1984, TCM moved to Boston, locating on Museum Wharf.
In 1996/1997, the TCM History Center (TCMHC) in Silicon Valley was established; its site was provided by NASA, and a large number of artifacts were shipped there from TCM.
In 1999, TCMHC incorporated and TCM ceased operation, shipping its remaining artifacts to TCMHC in 2000. The name TCM had been retained by the Boston Museum of Science. Therefore, in 2000, the name TCMHC was changed to its current “Computer History Museum” (CHM).
Its new building in Mountain View was before occupied by the Silicon Graphics computer company.
Every year, the Computer History Museum elects up to three persons as CHM Fellows.
