Computers & Business Machines - Overview
Imagine the loss, 100 years from now, if museums hadn't begun preserving the artifacts of the computer age. The last few decades offer proof positive of why museums must collect continuously—to document technological and social transformations already underway.
The Museum's collections contain mainframes, minicomputers, microcomputers, and handheld devices. A Cray2 supercomputer is part of the collections, along with one of the towers of IBM's Deep Blue, the computer that defeated reigning champion Garry Kasparov in a chess match in 1997. Other artifacts range from personal computers to ENIAC, the Altair, and the Osborne 1. Computer components and peripherals, games, software, manuals, and other documents are part of the collections. Some of the instruments of business include adding machines, calculators, typewriters, dictating machines, fax machines, cash registers, and photocopiers
"Computers & Business Machines - Overview" showing 81 items.
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Invitation to Attend a Meeting of the Short-Range Language Committee, June 1959
- Description
- During 1959 the first plans for the computer language COBOL emerged as a result of meetings of several committees and subcommittees of programmers. These were not the work of a professional society, but of groups organized by the U.S. Department of Defense. This letter invited Howard Bromberg of RCA to attend a subcommittee meeting held in Michigan. It represents only a small part of the organizational effort that went into COBOL.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1960
- ID Number
- 2010.3050.3
- catalog number
- 2010.3050.3
- nonaccession number
- 2010.3050
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
First Draft of the Progamming Language COBOL
- Description
- During 1959 the first plans for the computer language COBOL emerged as a result of meetings of several committees and subcommittees of programmers from American business and government. This heavily annotated typescript was prepared during a special meeting of the language subcommittee of the Short-Range Committee held in New York City in November. COBOL programs would actually run the following summer, and the same program was successfully tested on computers of two different manufacturers in December 1960.
- Reference: Jean E. Sammet, "The Early History of COBOL," History of Programming Languages, ed. Richard L. Wexelblat, New York: Academic Press, 1981, 199-277.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1959
- maker
- Conference on Data Systems Languages. Language Subcommittee of the Short-Range Committee
- ID Number
- 2010.3050.4
- catalog number
- 2010.3050.4
- nonaccession number
- 2010.3050
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Reel of Magnetic Tape with COBOL Compiler
- Description
- Programs and data were entered into many early computers, including those made by Univac and RCA, using reels of magnetic tape like this one. This particular tape carried a compiler for the programming language COBOL. It was used in December 1960, when a COBOL program first ran successfully on computers made by two different manufacturers. Thus it stands as a symbol of the birth of one of the first common programming languages. Computer programmers would come to expect that different brands of computers ran the same languages. COBOL became a routine tool for business programming.
- The reel is marked: UNIVAC. It is also marked: COBOL. A piece of tape attached to the back reads: 12/6/60 UNIVAC COBOL COMPILER 2319 UC.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1960
- maker
- Remington Rand Univac
- ID Number
- CI*317980.01
- catalog number
- 317980.01
- accession number
- 317980
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
IAS Computer
- Description
- The IAS Computer was named for the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. The computer was built from 1942 to 1951 at the Institute under the direction of John von Neumann, a mathematics professor at both Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study. Funds for the computer came from the Institute, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, and several military agencies of the U.S. Government. It cost several hundred thousand dollars. The goal of developing the IAS was to make digital computer designs more practical and efficient.
- Date made
- 1946-1952
- 1946-1951
- director
- von Neumann, John
- previous owner
- Institute for Advanced Study
- maker
- von Neumann, John
- Institute for Advanced Study
- ID Number
- CI*320250
- catalog number
- 320250
- accession number
- 220575
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
ENIAC Accumulator #2
- Description
- ENIAC was built by a team of engineers at the Moore School at the University of Pennsylvania between May 1943 and February, 1946. The team was working under contract for the Ballistics Research Laboratory of the U.S. Army Ordnance Department. The name ENIAC is an acronym of Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer. Principal engineers on the project were J. Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly. When complete, ENIAC filled a room measuring 30 feet by 50 feet and weighed 30 tons. It used around 18,000 vacuum tubes of 16 types, 1500 relays, 70,000 resistors, and 10,000 capacitors. It was 8 feet high, 3 feet wide, almost 100 feet long (if stretched out), and consumed 140 kilowatts of power. Construction costs were around half a million dollars.
- The Army commissioned ENIAC to perform a specific function: computing ballistics tables for aiming Army artillery. Creating accurate tables was a laborious process of solving differential equations for hundreds of positions and configurations for each gun. When the ENIAC project was started, human "computers" (largely women) were performing the calculations by hand with mechanical calculators, and they were falling hopelessly behind schedule. If the operations could be done in a pre-programmed sequence by an electronic machine, not only would they be completed faster, but results should include fewer errors than hand calculation.
- By the time ENIAC was finished, the war was over, and the original goal was no longer a pressing matter. All along, however, the development team realized that what they were creating in ENIAC was much more than a special purpose calculating device.
- An Army press release announcing its creation in 1946 proclaimed boldly: "A new machine that is expected to revolutionize the mathematics of engineering and change many of our industrial design methods was announced today by the War Department . This machine is the first all-electronic general purpose computer ever developed. It is capable of solving many technical and scientific problems so complex and difficult that all previous methods of solution were considered impractical . Begun in 1943 at the request of the Ordnance Department to break a mathematical bottleneck in ballistic research, its peacetime uses extend to all branches of scientific and engineering work."
- The claim, voiced here, that ENIAC was the "first all-electronic general purpose computer " has been a source of controversy ever since. Much of the debate has centered on patent issues. To summarize a complicated story, Eckert and Mauchly belatedly filed a patent application based on ENIAC in June 1947. They finally received a patent in 1964. The claims in their patent were broad, and soon Sperry Rand, the company with which Eckert and Mauchly were working by this time, began seeking infringement fees. Sperry Rand settled privately with IBM, but another target, Honeywell, challenged the patent. After a detailed investigation and trial, Judge Earl Lawson invalidated the ENIAC patent in late 1972. In part he ruled that crucial elements of ENIAC derived from prior work by John V. Atanasoff, an inventor who had built a special-purpose electronic computer at Iowa State College in the late 1930's. Although Atanasoff machine never worked well and he ultimately dropped the project, John Mauchly had known and visited him, and arguably got some ideas from this connection.
- The ruling by Judge Lawson has been taken by some to be proof that Atanasoff was the "Father of the Computer" and that Eckert and Mauchly were of subsidiary importance.
- Most computer historians claim, however, as Mauchly himself did, that if he and Eckert got anything from Atanasoff's work, its significance was of limited importance to the success of the project. In large part, this is because the genius of ENIAC derived more from the brilliance of its engineering than its fundamental conceptual design.
- Like most important technologies, the electronic digital computer ultimately derived from many sources and the work of many people. Besides contributions made in the United States, important developments were also made in Europe before and during World War II. Many people in addition to those involved in the patent fight made important contributions to the evolution of the digital computer. These included pioneers such as George Stibitz at Bell Laboratories, Howard Aitken at Harvard University, Konrad Zuse in Germany, and others.
- ENIAC remains singularly important, however, because it marks a major transition. It stood at the beginning of the digital computer industry in the United States. No machine before ENIAC was as large or powerful. None had its technical sophistication. Before it, no companies were striving to create and sell electronic digital computers as a principal line of business. ENIAC proved that a general-purpose electronic computer was both possible and valuable. After the War, and largely because of ENIAC, the field of digital computers was open. ENIAC was a clear, public announcement that the digital electronic computer had arrived, and that the Federal Government was strongly supporting its development.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1947-02-12
- maker
- University of Pennsylvania
- ID Number
- CI*321732.01
- catalog number
- 321732
- accession number
- 242457
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Terminal Interchange from PANAMAC Airlines Reservation System
- Description
- The PANAMAC, Pan American's first worldwide airline reservation management system, was installed in 1964, and used the IBM 7080 Data Processing System. PANAMAC linked hundreds of agent sets throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and the Caribbean with the Pan American computing center in New York City. The IBM 1006 Terminal Interchange was part of the networked system shown in this graphic from the PANAMAC manual. Using teleprocessors networked to the computing center, agents could access Pan Am flight information and book reservations almost instantly. While this is now commonplace, at the time it was an innovative and successful system.
- PANAMAC was based on computer networks developed for the United States military where “real-time” information was necessary to calculate projected trajectories for missiles. The IBM-designed network was only the second real-time network to be installed for high-speed computing and communication in the airline industry. The first networked system developed for real-time airline reservations was American Airline's SABRE (Semi-Automatic Business-Related Environment), developed by IBM and implemented in 1961 on an IBM 7090 system. Delta's Deltamatic flight reservation system, installed in 1964, was also designed by IBM and used an IBM 7074 system. Prior to these systems, reservation information was available but quickly outdated. A few early computer systems, such as American Airlines' Reservisor, designed by Teleregister Corp., provided quick access to flight information but were not set up to receive information. Reservations still had to be taken by hand and calls placed to airlines to confirm availability.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1962
- user
- Pan American Airlines
- maker
- IBM
- ID Number
- CI*335516
- accession number
- 321704
- catalog number
- 335516
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
International Dial Time Recorder Clock
- Description
- Showing up for work punctually, at an official time, became expected behavior toward the end of the 19th century, as more and more people worked for others rather than for themselves. Not just the work force's punctuality was at issue. Cost accounting and analysis--recording and scrutinizing expenses for labor, materials and overhead--were getting more attention than ever before. Time was money.
- In the 1890s, timekeepers-- clerks who kept track of employees' hours in handwritten logs --found that machines were beginning to replace them, especially in workplaces with large numbers of employees. Thanks to the influence of the advocates of scientific management, nearly every industrial workplace had a time clock, after about 1910. So did many offices. By the early twentieth century the International Time Recording Company supplied an entire line of timekeeping devices, including master clocks, several types of time clocks, and time stamps. Founded in 1900, the firm continuously expanded its product line, underwent several reorganizations and name changes, and emerged in 1924 as the International Business Machine Corporation, familiar today as IBM.
- One of the firm's most popular products was the dial time recorder, a clock that could furnish a daily or weekly record of up to 150 employees. Based on the 1888 patent of physician Alexander Dey, the dial time recorder was essentially a spring-driven clock with a cast-iron wheel affixed to its dial side. The rim of the wheel was perforated with numbered holes. As employees pressed a rotating pointer into the hole at their assigned number, the machine recorded the time on a preprinted sheet and rang a bell with each punch. A two-color ribbon printed all regular time in green and all tardiness, early departures, and overtime in red.
- This International dial time recorder hung in a factory in the garment district of New York City.
- Date made
- ca 1912
- manufacturer
- IBM
- ID Number
- ME*336750
- catalog number
- 336750
- accession number
- 1978.2237
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Apple Macintosh Mouse
- Description
- Invented in 1963, the mouse improved interactions with computers. However, not until 1984, when Apple Computers introduced the Macintosh and its graphical user interface, did the mouse become a standard computer component.
- Date made
- 1984
- maker
- Apple Computer
- ID Number
- 1985.3011.01.1
- catalog number
- 1985.3011.01.1
- accession number
- 1985.3011
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Nanoseconds Associated with Grace Hopper
- Description
- This bundle consists of about one hundred pieces of plastic-coated wire, each about 30 cm (11.8 in) long. Each piece of wire represents the distance an electrical signal travels in a nanosecond, one billionth of a second. Grace Murray Hopper (1906–1992), a mathematician who became a naval officer and computer scientist during World War II, started distributing these wire "nanoseconds" in the late 1960s in order to demonstrate how designing smaller components would produce faster computers.
- The "nanoseconds" in this bundle were among those Hopper brought with her to hand out to Smithsonian docents at a March 1985 lecture at NMAH. Later, as components shrank and computer speeds increased, Hopper used grains of pepper to represent the distance electricity traveled in a picosecond, one trillionth of a second (one thousandth of a nanosecond).
- Reference: Kathleen Broome Williams, Grace Hopper: Admiral of the Cyber Sea, Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2004.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1985
- distributor
- Hopper, Grace Murray
- ID Number
- 1985.3088.01
- catalog number
- 1985.3088.01
- nonaccession number
- 1985.3088
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Texas Instruments SR-10 Calculator
- Description
- The Texas Instrument Slide Rule-10, more commonly known as the TI SR-10, was a handheld calculator introduced in November 1972, just a few months after TI's first calculator, the Datamath. The SR-10 initially retailed at $149, but was produced in large numbers and soon sold at significant discount. The calculator made use of the TMS0120 single-chip calculator circuit derived from the TMS1802, better known as the first "calculator-on-a-chip."
- The calculator had a LED (Light Emitting Diode) display capable of showing 10 decimal digits, and used a NICAD battery pack to power the red numeric display. The user had to constantly charge and recharge the battery after a few hours of use. The NICAD batteries would usually go bad after a few hundred charges. This was a major drawback for early electronic calculators. Later LCD (liquid Crystal Display) devices used so little power that they could run on tiny solar cells.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1972
- maker
- Texas Instruments
- ID Number
- 1986.0988.354
- catalog number
- 1986.0988.354
- accession number
- 1986.0988
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
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