The Computer History Museum is paradise for those with an interest intechnology and how it started, writes Karlin Lillington, in Silicon Valley.
"We're doing something new and different here," says Mr John C Toole, and they most certainly are.
Behind him rises a floor-to-ceiling "PC Wall" - a display of dozens of home computers, from the legendary Alto, the ill-fated Xerox 1970s machine that inspired the home computing revolution, to the first Apples, IBMs, Radio Shacks and, well, everything - it's enough to make a geek weep with joy.
We've just entered "Visible Storage", the display area of the new home of Silicon Valley's Computer History Museum. Housed for years in a warehouse provided by NASA, the museum reopened last month in a dramatic, former Silicon Graphics building.
Ironically, the building was available - and affordable - because of the economic battering of the industry the museum lovingly documents and archives.
On one side stretches an aisle of old calculation devices: abacuses, linear and cylindrical slide rules, sets of "Napier's Bones" - dice-like objects used for figuring out equations. Many of these objects are from the personal collection of Mr Gordon Bell, the stellar industry figure who co-founded Digital Equipment Corporation.
Nearby sit some of the earliest mechanical devices - a piece of Victorian Charles Babbage's "Difference Engine"; a working replica of the 1889 Hollerith Census Machine, created to tabulate the US census by the man who would go on to found IBM; an Enigma machine, used by the Germans to send encrypted messages in the second World War; and some early punch-card machines, the fore-runners of modern computers.
Although punch-cards were used into the 1970s and 1980s - the perforated pieces of card were the actual computer programs in the days before software - they're a real curiosity to many museum visitors, says Mr Toole. "You'd be surprised at the number of people who've never even heard of punch-cards."
Further on, looming in the back, is a veritable computing hall of fame of the legendary "Big Iron" mammoths that mark computing's history. There's a chunk of ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator), the room-sized second World War invention with 18,000 vacuum tubes, designed to measure missile trajectories.
Then there's the "Johnniac", a massive computer built in 1954 by the Rand Corporation and named after computing pioneer John von Neumann, costing $470,000 (€414,000).
The size of five US-style refrigerators, the Johnniac is notable for having a memory in which to store data, although its entire brain capacity was 4k - about the size of a brief email.
Along one aisle stretch two famous machines - the enormous WISC (Wisconsin Integrally Synchronised Computer), which another computing legend, Mr Gene Amdahl, built in 1952 as part of his PhD project in theoretical physics (as you do) and one of only 46 SAGE (Semi-Automated Ground Environment) computers, part of a $10 billion Cold War initiative to process radar data and detect Russian fighter planes. "The only piece of machinery that came with a cigarette lighter and ashtray," quips Mr Toole, pointing to features built in alongside SAGE's circular yellow screen.
And there's plenty more: a $10,600, 1968 table-sized "kitchen computer" from the posh Neimann-Marcus catalogue, designed to store recipes and never purchased; and several examples of space-agey Cray supercomputers, including one nicknamed "the world's most expensive love seat", which incorporates circular seating and panels in your choice of colours.
Only 15 per cent of the museum's collection - part of which came from Boston's former Computing Museum, set up by Mr Bell and since merged into its California cousin - is on display, but the extraordinary archive includes advertising, manuals, robots, videos, gaming devices, even the prototype for the palm hand-held computer.
Visible Storage is the only display area at the moment but, by 2007, the museum plans a computing timeline, a library, theme galleries and more. It is already holding its well-known lecture series in its new 400-seat auditorium. Its 15 employees seem lost inside the office area, still full of Silicon Graphics cubicles and office furniture.
The industry has been a stalwart supporter and has helped raise $54 million of the $100 million needed to get the museum on its own feet, says Mr Toole. The museum also has no shortage of volunteers eager to share their memories and knowledge with visitors.
Despite the treasure trove, Mr Toole notes that much of computing history has been lost, because many companies - especially the dotcom-era ones, he says - didn't save objects and documentation, from business plans to emails to product catalogues.
Also, for branding reasons, some companies actively obliterate the history of the companies they acquire, he says.
Only some of the larger companies, like HP, Apple and IBM, have trained, in-house archivists.
He hopes eventually to get a programme together to advise companies on what to save and how to save it. Much of the museum's collection comes from key industry people who stored items they loved, he says. More is gathered through donations, items purchased at garage sales, things people find in their attics.
But why should anyone care about all this stuff, much of which comes from our very recent past? Is it really history?
Computers have changed life, says Mr Toole, himself an engineer and computer scientist. "They are so important to our society, our technologies, to people. I think if you can chronicle their story, you can inspire people - inspire them to innovate and create."
Is there one object he'd love to acquire for the collection more than any other? "Oh, just one?" he complains, and ponders. "A full Univac computer would be really cool to have."
Computer History Museum: www.computerhistory.org
weblog: http://radio.weblogs. com/0103966/
