Computers & Business Machines

Morse-Vail Telegraph Key

Description

Alfred Vail made this key, believed to be from the first Baltimore-Washington telegraph line, as an improvement on Samuel Morse's original transmitter. Vail helped Morse develop a practical system for sending and receiving coded electrical signals over a wire, which was successfully demonstrated in 1844.

Morse's telegraph marked the arrival of instant long-distance communication in America. The revolutionary technology excited the public imagination, inspiring predictions that the telegraph would bring about economic prosperity, national unity, and even world peace.

Date made

1844

used date

1844

demonstrator

Morse, Samuel Finley Breese

Vail, Alfred

maker

Vail, Alfred

Morse, Samuel Finley Breese

ID Number

EM.181411

catalog number

181411

accession number

31652

Data Source

National Museum of American History

Sholes & Schwalbach Patent Model for Improvement in Type-Writing Machines

Description

Inventors C. Latham Sholes and Matthias Schwalback of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, submitted this typewriter model with their patent application for an improved up strike key lever mechanism for printing onto paper. The inventors received number 182,511 on September 9, 1876. The typewriter has two rows of keys in roughly alphabetical layout as well as the numbers 7 and 8. When struck, the keys would rise up and hit the piece of paper lying horizontally on the platen of the typewriter. The carriage would have to be lifted for the typist to see their typed words.

Location

Currently not on view

date made

ca 1872

patent granted by United States Patent Office

1876-09-09

licensee

Sholes, C. Latham

Schwalbach, Matthias

patentee

Sholes, C. Latham

Schwalbach, Matthias

ID Number

1981.0359.02

catalog number

1981.0359.02

accession number

1981.0359

patent number

182511

Data Source

National Museum of American History

Underwood Model 5

Description

The Underwood Model 5, introduced in 1899, is the result of almost thirty years of innovation and improvements in typewriter manufacture. It became the ubiquitous office machine for another thirty years, and its sales led Underwood to dominate the market. The Model 5 became the modern standard of how a typewriter worked and what it looked like.

The first successful commercial typewriter, developed by Christopher Scholes and Carlos Glidden, was brought to the public in 1874 by the Remington Company. Two elements from that first machine remained dominant in the design of eventual typewriters: the QWERTY keyboard, a pattern of letters on the keyboard, and the telegraph type key movement. At first sales were slow, but the typewriter industry grew as businesses expanded along with their need to retain records, and process paperwork at fast speeds. More and more people, mostly women, learned the new skill of typing, creating a new class of clerical worker, according to historian JoAnne Yates.

There were a handful of typewriter manufacturers by the end of the 1880s such as Remington, a leader in the industry, L.C. Smith & Brothers, Caligraph, Hammond, and a number of smaller firms. As the number of manufacturers grew, so too did the improvements, including the addition of a shift key to activate upper and lower case letters, the size and weight had been reduced but until 1895, but typists could not see what they had typed until the typed page advanced forward.

In the early 1890s, Franz X Wagner, a German immigrant, engineered the first reliable "visible" typewriter that allowed the typist to see the text as they typed. Wagner had already designed several earlier typing machines. John T. Underwood, producer of office supplies such as carbon paper and ribbons, purchased Wagner's design and manufactured it as the Underwood Model 1 in 1895. Unlike earlier machines, which had an up strike type bar from underneath the paper, the new design in

After six years and two other models that improved touch, and tab function and provided quieter operation, Underwood came out with the Model 5 in 1900. Compared to earlier machines of the 1870s, this machine is plain. The machine in the collection was produced in 1910. It has a black frame with gold lettering and stripping.

Date made

1914

maker

Underwood Typewriter Company

ID Number

ME.312108

accession number

161692

catalog number

312108

Data Source

National Museum of American History

Intel Tri-Gate Test Wafer

Description

This is an uncut silicon wafer containing Intel’s tri-gate transistor technology, the 22 nanometer microprocessor architecture used in Intel’s Ivy Bridge and Haswell CPU’s. The test structures on this wafer were designed by Uday Shah and Ravi Pillarisetty and provided a proof-of-concept to Intel that 3D tri-gate transistor technology was commercially viable. While the architecture was originally announced in 2002, Intel’s Ivy Bridge CPU’s didn’t hit the market until late 2011, a testimony to the highly intricate nature of microprocessor production.

The highly pure silicon wafer provides the substrate for transistors on the integrated circuits that make up microprocessors. The wiring circuity is imprinted on the silicon via a microscopic photolithography process. Intel’s tri-gate technology refers to the process of stacking a single logic gate on top of two vertical gates, creating conducting channels on three sides of a vertical fin structure, a three dimensional transistor that results in lower energy consumption and increased speed.

Location

Currently not on view (plastic case)

date made

2006

maker

Intel Corporation

ID Number

2014.0098.01

catalog number

2014.0098.01

accession number

2014.0098

Data Source

National Museum of American History

Intel Tri-Gate Chip Mask

Description

This chip mask was used in the manufacture Intel’s 22 nanometer tri-gate transistor microprocessors. The silicon wafer is chemically treated to make it sensitive to ultraviolet light. A focused beam of extreme ultraviolet light shines through the chip mask, creating a microscopic pattern on the silicon. The patterns are then ionized to create positive and negative semiconductors. The process is repeated with a variety of masks to create all the necessary circuits and turn the semiconductors into transistors that make up an integrated circuit. The silicon wafer is then cut into chips, packaged, and sold to consumers.

Location

Currently not on view

ID Number

2014.0098.02

catalog number

2014.0098.02

accession number

2014.0098

Data Source

National Museum of American History

iTunes Gift Card

Description

James Klein gave his sister Katharine this iTunes gift card as a Christmas present. A large consumer of music, Katharine, and many other millennials, turned to digital files for her music collection rather than previous generations that had purchased records, tapes, and CDs.

Distributing music through computer networks transformed the music industry. Apple Computer became the leader through its iPod media players and iTunes store. Traditional “brick and

mortar” companies had to adapt to online shopping by creating websites and offering gift cards that could be used online as well as in stores.

The use of gift cards began in the 1990s and took off quickly. Gift givers liked the cards because it helped them avoid gift mistakes and gift receivers enjoyed the cards because they could use the card to get what they want. Retailers liked gift cards because they lower the gift return rate, bring in additional business, and often don’t get redeemed.

ID Number

2013.0230.01

serial number

PBH6063300000729891502

catalog number

2013.0230.01

accession number

2013.0230

Data Source

National Museum of American History

Yogeeswaran Ganesan’s Intel ID Badge

Description

Yogeeswaran Ganesan wore this ID badge at his job as an photolithography engineer for the Intel Corporation between 2011 2014. Ganesan was born in India and came to the United States, first as a Masters student at the University of Texas, Arlington then on an F 1 student visa to participate in the nanomechanics PhD program at Rice University. After receiving his PhD for his thesis on “The Mechanical Characterization of Multi Wall Carbon Nanotubes and Related Interfaces in Nanocomposites” Intel hired him as a semiconductor research scientist.

ID Number

2014.0038.02

catalog number

2014.0038.02

accession number

2014.0038

Data Source

National Museum of American History

Intel Microprocessor Chips

Description

This is a set of five Intel 22 nanometer tri-gate quad core microprocessor dies. These chips belonged to Intel’s Ivy Bridge line of microprocessor architecture, mainly sold in the Core i5 and Core i7 lines of processors. After the wafer has been cut into dies, the chips are packaged with electrical connections and heatsinks and are ready to be used. These Intel chips would be put in a land grid array (LGA, seen in the second image) package that has a grid of electrical contacts on the bottom that comes into contact with the socket pins on a printed circuit board (motherboard).

Location

Currently not on view (case; microprocessor chip 3)

ID Number

2014.0098.03

catalog number

2014.0098.03

accession number

2014.0098

Data Source

National Museum of American History

Symbol Technologies LDT 3805 Laser Data Terminal

Description

Symbol Technologies LDT 3805 Laser Data Terminal was manufactured around 1997 as a handheld bar code scanner with manual key entry. The LDT 3805 had 256 kilobytes of storage with 128 kilobytes of RAM and an 80C88 CPU running at eight megahertz. The LDT 3805 was used in retail settings to manage inventory counts, shelf-price audits, markdowns, and purchasing. It was also used in industrial applications to track shipments to warehouses and distributions centers. The scanner had a five-foot range, took rechargeable batteries, was rugged enough to survive a four-foot drop, and used a dock to upload and download data to a PC.

maker

Symbol Technologies, Inc.

ID Number

1997.0399.01

catalog number

1997.0399.01

accession number

1997.0399

serial number

(S)B594277

model number

LDT 3805

Data Source

National Museum of American History