1401 N Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View, CA

One of the first computing technologies displayed at the museum was punched card sorters and collators. Punched cards were paper cards punched with holes in meaningful locations to represent information. The sorters and collators would organize hundreds or thousands of cards quickly to group information in a meaningful way to help answer questions. The IBM Type 80 sorter was invented in 1925 and was used into the 1940s.

resulted in some questionable business practices. IBM provided punched card technology to the Nazis during WWII through its German subsidiary Dehomag. This is a photo of Thomas Watson, Sr. meeting with Adolf Hitler in 1937.

This famous encryption machine was used by the Germans in WWII for encrypted radio communication.


The instructions begin: "Please note! Note the instructions for use for the encryption machine."

ENIAC was one of the first electronic programmable digital computers. This is a "small" piece of it. It used vacuum tubes for memory.

UNIVAC was the successor to the ENIAC, designed by the men who invented ENIAC.
Who is this guy in my shot of the supervisory console?


I think the tape drive is looking at me.

The DEC PDP-11 minicomputer was popular in the 1970's.



The first edition of UNIX ran on a PDP-11/20 (unix.org).

The Alto could be considered the first personal computer. It had the first of several innovations, including the mouse and Ethernet networking.

The Cray-1 was a popular supercomputer in the late 1970's and early 80's.

What would the history of computers be like without the Nintendo Entertainment System? I still have one of these.