Last updated: 5/29/2011
1401 N Shoreline BlvdMountain View, CA 94043
Sunday, Wednesday - Friday
12 PM - 4 PM
Monday - Friday
9 AM - 5 PM
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John Hollar
phone: 650-810-1000
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Gary Matsushita
phone: 650-810-1001
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Katy Perry
phone: 650-810-1018
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The mission of the Computer History Museum is to
preserve and present for posterity the artifacts and stories of the information age. Dedicated to
exploring the social impact of computing, the Museum is home to the world's largest collection of computing-related items, spanning from pre-computing objects,
to semiconductors, hardware, software, computer graphics systems, games, networking, robots, the Internet, and beyond. Its growing collection also
includes photos, films, videos, manuals, documents, publications, and marketing materials. The web-based catalog currently lists over 62,000 items.
The museum presents many public programs and has several exhibits for the general public in it's facility in Mountain View CA and on the web. It's
archive and deep collection are available for use by researchers.
We are currently working on a large overview exhibit titled Computer History: The First 2000 Years, scheduled to open at the end of 2010. It
will occupy 30,000 square feet in our physical building and many gigabytes on our website, with links to documents and videos from the collection.
The collection began in the late 1970s as a personal project of Gwen and Gordon Bell. It became public as "The Computer Museum" in Boston in the early 1980s. In the late 1990s it was moved to its current home in
Silicon Valley.
The collection covers the complete history
of computing from ancient times to the modern day, and is international in
scope. It includes hardware, software, documents, ephermera, photographs,
films, and videos.
The Museum seeks to preserve a comprehensive view of computing history, one
that includes the machines, software, business and competitive environments,
personal recollections, and social implications of one of humankind's most
important invention, the computer.
Only about 10% of the collection is on
exhibit; the remainder is available for access by researchers. It ranges
from rare books to hand-written manuscripts, from hardware artifacts to
software source code, from computer manuals to marketing propaganda, and
from microscopic chips to room-sized mainframe computers.
We provide docent-led gallery tours of our physical
exhibits on a regular basis and by appointment. We have printed family and
school guides. Other educational programs are under development.
Access: Students, Scholars, Members
Appointment required: Yes
We publish a glossy 32-page
magazine called CORE several times a year.
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