A computer museum is a museum devoted to the study of historic computer hardware and software, where a museum is a "permanent institution in the service of society and of its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment, for the purposes of education, study, and enjoyment", as defined by the International Council of Museums.[1].
Some computer museums exist within a larger institution, such as the Science Museum in London and the Deutsches Museum in Munich. Others, such as the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, the Heinz Nixdorf Museum in Paderborn, and The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park, are dedicated specifically to computing. Some specialize in the early history of computing, others in the era that started with the first personal computers such as the Apple I and Altair 8800, Apple IIs, older Apple Macintoshes, Commodore Internationals, Amigas, IBM PCs and more rare computers such as the Osborne 1. Some concentrate more on research and conservation, others more on education and entertainment.
There are also some private collections. Microsoft have their own computer museum at their headquarters which is open to the public, and at one time Apple Computer also had a museum open to the public.
Bletchley Park conserves and exhibits equipment associated with British code-breaking activities during the Second World War.
The UK National Archive for the History of Computing in Manchester, England [2] concentrates on the preservation of historical documents related to computing, rather than on the computers themselves.
Other collections exist only in online form. There is an extensive hardware collection at old-computers.com[3], first opened online in 1996. As of 2006[update], it includes 935 computers, 84 consoles and 98 pongs. However, old-computers.com is missing many vintage systems such as the Macintosh Classic from 1990. Collections of software and documentation also exist online, for example at Bitsavers[4].
Some computer museums
This list is incomplete. See also Category:Computer museums.
- American Computer Museum, claims to be the oldest that is currently operating
- Bletchley Park in Bletchley, England
- The National Museum of Computing in Bletchley, England
- Computer History Museum, claims to be the largest
- DigiBarn Computer Museum in Boulder Creek, California
- Rhode Island Computer Museum
- The Computer Museum, Boston, closed in 1999
- Personal Computer Museum in Brantford, Ontario, Canada
- Heinz Nixdorf Museum in Paderborn, Germany (also claims to be the largest). See http://www.hnf.de/museum/index_en.html.
- The Centre for Computing History in Haverhill, Suffolk, UK Computer Museum
- The technikum29 museum near Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, a small museum of computer and communications technology which specialises in maintaining and demonstrating equipment in fully working order. See http://www.technikum29.de/en/.
See also
References
- ^ "ICOM Statutes". International Council of Museums. http://icom.museum/statutes.html#2. Retrieved on 2008-04-05.
- ^ http://www.chstm.manchester.ac.uk/research/nahc/
- ^ http://www.old-computers.com/
- ^ http://www.bitsavers.org/
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