Computer History Museum
I was at Grady Booch’s lecture last night, the 2007 BCS / IET Turing Lecture. It was a great event, which I’ll write more on over the weekend, but I wanted to put this link up now. The Computer History Museum is collecting together as complete a set of computers as it can from the early days, though I don’t think they have a Collossus from Bletchley Park yet.
Check out the timeline for computers at http://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/?category=cmptr
They’re starting to collect interesting software too. Apparently there’s great concern that some of the early software created by NASA and others is perishing, and it’s as important in many ways as early printed documents. One of the questions Grady Booch posed in his lecture was whether we need to keep the source code for Windows 95 for posterity, and if so what would people read / run it on in 100 years?
