Back in October 2010, I was interviewed for the Computer History Museum's new exhibit, Revolution: The First 2000 Years of Computing, and then in November I was invited to a pre-opening tour of the exhibit, which was enormously fun. The exhibit wasn't finished yet, so much of it was still in shrink-wrap, and most of the title cards said things like, "38 word description goes here", but that actually made it more fun: not only did we get to see all these amazing old artfacts, but we got to peek behind the curtain and see how you build a museum exhibit, which was really interesting in its own right.
The exhibit opened to the public in January 2011, but somehow I hadn't gotten around to visiting again until November, so here are two sets of photos, taken a year apart.
Their fully functional Difference Engine is truly a marvel. Make sure you see it being demonstrated! The sounds it makes are incredible.
There's a short clip with me in the "Art of Writing Software" movie, and I show up in at least one of the smaller video kiosks talking about what programming is like. (You can see the DNA Lounge logo in the background! Yay! But they misspelled my name on the kiosk! Boo!)
It really is a great museum. Its easy to spend many hours there. You should give them money and artifacts.
Like Dr. McCoy in a 20th-century hospital, when I look at those toggle-switch panels I am gripped by sympathetic horror at the barbaric conditions my predecessors worked in. I also feel faintly guilty about bitching at the inconveniences of, say, the C++STL.
Aww, you can barely see the ashtray! http://www.jwz.org/photos/2011-11-05-computerhistory/119.html
For Commodore/reality-of-the-'80s-PC-era wankers like myself, the video from their C64 anniversary bash [including Tramiel, Woz, and Bill Lowe from IBM] is not to be missed. For some reason it does not seem to readily pop up on their site, though. http://www.commodore.ca/gallery/video/video.htm appears to have it in chunks up top.
Great photos, I'll have to go back. I think they need to revive the blinkenlights though. That'd be fun.
You might also like to be enjoying this book: http://www.amazon.com/Core-Memory-Visual-Vintage-Computers/dp/0811854426
"Tank Heater Voltage Monitor" is by far my most favorite knob.
Hah.. in http://www.jwz.org/photos/2011-11-05-computerhistory/138.html we had both the red puzzle game (I can't remember the name) on the left and the electronic trivia booklet game on the right.
Ah.. Merlin was the Red thing.
They misspelt "jwz"? Hopefully it is at least hyphenated correctly.
The scrolling "instructions written in code" at 0:22 is from mozilla-central.
CNavDTD.cpp
That Difference Engine is the only computer I've seen that has an oil pan.
What's the name of the red phone here?
http://www.jwz.org/photos/2011-11-05-computerhistory/138.html
Each of the four buttons at the bottom run a different game. I had one of these a million years ago and I wanted to recreate them for xscreensaver, but I couldn't remember its name or the exact rules.
I'm pretty sure it was called "Split Second", but that phrase is eminently ungooglable.
Merlin
Oh, wow, and the manuals, too! Thanks!
Obviously I had both, and conflated the two. That's memory for you.