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Back in time to history's database
30 August 2001

Archaic: the ENIAC computer contained
17,468 vacuum tubes linked by 500 miles of
wiring and was used, among other things, to
determine the feasibility of the hydrogen
bomb

The Computer Museum History Centre houses America's largest collection of digital memorabilia. Chloe Veltman paid it a visit

I have never been struck by a stronger urge to study history than when I moved to Silicon Valley last year. Perhaps it was something to do with trying to get a grip on this accelerated universe of transient companies and ever-evolving gizmos, or perhaps the geek within was gagging to get its hands on the console of an Illiac IV.

As a result, I took the train to the heart of Silicon Valley to visit the Computer Museum History Centre, America's largest collection of digital memorabilia.

Getting into the museum makes hacking into the Pentagon's computer system look easy. Established in 1996 at Moffett Federal Airfield in Mountain View, a former US naval base now owned by NASA, the museum and the entire Nasa facility around it, are stringently guarded. I am escorted on and off the premises as a "foreign national" and receive a grilling from a surly custodian behind plexiglass. "I see you were born in London," she says, squinting at my ID. "What part of London exactly?"

The fact that the museum is currently in a state of semi-hibernation adds to the strange feeling that I have about this experience. When the Computer Museum in Boston merged into Boston's Museum of Science in 1996, its entire collection of computer artefacts moved to Mountain View and the Computer Museum History Centre began to evolve. In 2005, the museum will open a smart new exhibition facility at Moffett Airfield, but for now, only 10pc of the artefacts are currently on view to the public. Anyone who wants to twiddle the knobs on a Zuse Z3 must make an appointment to join a twice-weekly guided tour.

Dwarfed by the gargantuan shadows of Hangar One, the nondescript warehouse that currently serves as the museum's "visible storage unit" is something of an anti-climax compared with the burnt-out space shuttles and massive wind-tunnels lying around the airfield. From the outside, it looks like the sort of place you would leave defunct computers to rust rather than a home for some of the world's most precious digital relics.

Inside, however, it is a computer nerd's paradise. It is hard to gauge the cultural significance of the chaotic jumble of closet-sized metal boxes spewing out spaghetti wires, glass tubes and levers that first greets me as I step across the threshold.

Luckily John Toole, the museum's chief executive, is on hand with explanations. "The ENIAC," he announces, pointing to a clunking antique that was once part of the world's biggest and most powerful computer. Weighing 30 tons, the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator) was 18 feet high and 80 feet long and contained 17,468 vacuum tubes linked by 500 miles of wiring.

It was completed in 1946, performed 100,000 operations per second and was used, among other things, to determine the feasibility of the hydrogen bomb. This was the first general purpose computer, but the behemoth has less oomph than a modern pocket calculator by today's standard.

Perhaps one of the most striking things about the museum is that very few of the artefacts look anything like computers today. "What's this?" I ask Toole, staring dubiously at what looks like an old-fashioned wooden clothes horse with some bicycle chains slung over it. "This is the number sieve - a revolutionary computer by the brilliant inventor DH Lehmer for calculating factors of numbers," says Toole. "And this?" I ask, staring into a Perspex box that appears to contain nothing but an old circuit board.

It turns out to be an original Apple-1 computer kit that Silicon Valley uber-geek Steve Wozniak built in 1975 to impress his fellow nerds at the Homebrew Computer Club. For $666.66 (£475), the buyer received a printed-circuit board, a bag of parts and a 16-page assembly manual.

It is a far cry from the latest slick Apple iBook, but with the help of his business-savvy friend Steve Jobs, 50 Apple-1's were sold to a local computer shop and Apple Computer was born.

Despite the presence of a Hollerith "Tabulator", a machine that revolutionised the process of analysing data in the 1890 US census, the museum's collection dates mostly from 1945. It stretches to "antiques" such as a Palm Pilot prototype from 1996.

Given the speed at which technologies become obsolete, how does the museum know what to collect? "It's difficult. Like everything else in this industry, historical value is accelerated," the museum's vice-president of development and public relations, Eleanor Dickman, tells me later.

"We like people to check with us before they throw something out," says Toole, as we hover over the only extant example of a Honeywell H316 Kitchen Computer, an eccentric coffee-table-sized red plastic appliance that was built in 1965 to help housewives store recipes. None was sold.

"Does this mean I could donate my old Spectrum ZX81?" I ask. "We usually only accept items of unique value, such as the original roll of BASIC paper tape that Bill Gates and Paul Allen programmed for the Altair 8800," says Toole. The Altair 8800 was the first computer designed specifically for personal use in 1974. It did not come with an operating system, so the enterprising pair programmed one and soon turned it into a profitable little business called Micro Soft.

I stumble back out into the Californian sunlight with a whirring brain. In the space of one hour, I have reacquainted myself with a piece of my past - the Commodore 64 home computer, pressed the "fire missile" button on "Computer Space", an early arcade game encased in a green glittery terminal, and handled the original Teapot on which the standard model for rendering computer graphics was based.

"A museum is nothing but a huge database," says Toole as we head back to his office. When the Computer Museum History Centre goes full-throttle in 2005, it will be much more than a musty room full of scrap metal. In addition to the collection of more than 3,000 physical artefacts, Toole is planning a cyber museum.

The museum is also collecting the memoirs of some tech stars via video, audio and text, from Grace Hopper, a computer pioneer who programmed the groundbreaking Harvard I computer and coined the term "computer bug," to Vint Cerf, the "father" of the internet.