Computers & Business Machines
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. Computers range from the pioneering ENIAC to microcomputers like the Altair and the Apple I. 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. 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
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Ceramic Jar with Cork Containing Plastic Y2K Bugs
- Description
- This turquoise and gray jar has a cork lid. It contains eighteen colorful plastic bugs.
- Donor Jan Lilja received the jar as a gift from a colleague at the time she was the Y2K Executive at the Food and Nutrition Service, an agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The Food and Nutrition Service administers the nation's nutrition programs such as food stamps (now called SNAP), WIC, and school lunch and breakfast programs. Because most of these programs are administered through the states, territories and local governments, Lilja was also held personally responsible for preventing computer software problems in nutrition programs at these entities when dates changed from 1999 to 2000. To recognize the hard work done, the U.S. government created Y2K medals. She requested about 100 of these for individuals within FNS and arranged an awards ceremony. When the medals did not arrive in time for the ceremony, she purchased plastic bugs to put in the ceramic jar. Rather than receiving a medal, awardees received a bug and a paper certificate (for such a certificate, see 2016.3118.01). These bugs were far more widely displayed than the medals that eventually arrived (for such a medal, see 2016.0138.02).
- She distributed the bugs as rewards to those working on the project.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 2000
- ca 1999
- 1999-2000
- ID Number
- 2016.0138.01
- accession number
- 2016.0138
- catalog number
- 2016.0138.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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Medal Awarded by the Presiden't Council on Year 2000 Conversion for Outstanding Y2K Service
- Description
- This metal medal and ribbon are in a cloth-lined leatherette case. The medal was awarded to Jan Lilja for work on assuring that computer programs developed in the 1900s would work in the year 2000 and later. For related objects, see 2016.0138.01 and 2016.3118.01.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 2000
- ID Number
- 2016.0138.02
- accession number
- 2016.0138
- catalog number
- 2016.0138.02
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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Certificate of Appreciation for Those Working on a Y2K Project
- Description
- This computer-generated sheet acknowledges the contribution of an employee of the Food and Nutrition Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to exterminating the Y2k "bug." It is signed by George A. Braley and Janice G. Lilja, and was given to the museum by Lilja.
- For related objects, see 2016.0138.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 2000
- ID Number
- 2016.3118.01
- catalog number
- 2016.3118.01
- nonaccession number
- 2016.3118
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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Log Book With Computer Bug
- Description
- American engineers have been calling small flaws in machines "bugs" for over a century. Thomas Edison talked about bugs in electrical circuits in the 1870s. When the first computers were built during the early 1940s, people working on them found bugs in both the hardware of the machines and in the programs that ran them.
- In 1947, engineers working on the Mark II computer at Harvard University found a moth stuck in one of the components. They taped the insect in their logbook and labeled it "first actual case of bug being found." The words "bug" and "debug" soon became a standard part of the language of computer programmers.
- Among those working on the Mark II in 1947 was mathematician and computer programmer Grace Hopper, who later became a Navy rear admiral. This log book was probably not Hopper's, but she and the rest of the Mark II team helped popularize the use of the term computer bug and the related phrase "debug."
- References:
- Grace Murray Hopper,"The First Bug," Annals of the History of Computing,vol. 3 #3, 1981, pp. 285-286.
- P. A. Kidwell, "Stalking the ElusiveComputer Bug," IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, vo.20, #4, 1998, pp.5-9.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1947
- director
- Aiken, Howard Hathaway
- maker
- Harvard University
- IBM
- Harvard University
- Aiken, Howard
- ID Number
- 1994.0191.01
- catalog number
- 1994.0191.1
- accession number
- 1994.0191
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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