Gordon Bell - Tour of the Computer History Museum, Part II

Posted By: scobleizer | Oct 4th, 2005 @ 5:48 PM | 61,892 Views | 25 Comments
Today you get to see Gordon Bell's face light up as he shows you the second half of the Computer History Museum. He also takes us in the back where people don't get to visit.

Oh, check out the computer with bullet holes and another with cigarette holders! How times have changed.

See early hard drives and even the first Google computers! More stories from Dan'l Lewin, member of the first Macintosh team, later co-founder of NeXT and now works at Microsoft. My son Patrick is there too.

Some special thanks: Ajay Juneja, founder of Speak With Me, and a volunteer at the museum, got us in (he's in the video toward the end too).

Thanks too to John Toole, executive director and CEO of the museum who gave us a killer tour along with Gordon Bell. Also Steven Brewster, director of marketing and communications, and Dag Spicer, senior curator for helping out and getting us this great access.

Finally, thanks to Gordon Bell for having the vision 30 years ago to start saving computers from the trash heap so we have a way to learn about our industry's past.
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#Oct 4th, 2005 @ 6:10 PM
ajayjuneja
ajayjuneja
Yippie Smiley

First post!

Go watch the video everyone -- especially if you can't come to the museum.

And if you can come to the museum, please visit! I tend to volunteer on the weekends there.
#Oct 4th, 2005 @ 8:24 PM
iStation
iStation
Fuujin
What a downsizing history of Computer hardware! :O 
#Oct 4th, 2005 @ 9:22 PM
Nata1
Nata1
.Search - Google Appliance killer
the suspense was killing me! but it started with a gap in there - no mention of the previous machine -

whered the bullet holes come from!!
#Oct 4th, 2005 @ 9:42 PM
Nata1
Nata1
.Search - Google Appliance killer
One of the most beautiful and hideous things about this museum is this -

Why where these systems built?  what purpose did they hold?

I'm terribly influenced by The New Industrial State by John Kenneth Galbraith - and when I'm looking at these videos, I see that these systems were underwritten sometimes by big business, but mostly by the coldwar...

I can hardly think of the coldwar as being something good until I see some of these - that kind of risk - just to have a microsoft/sun/apple today -

That's what they were built for, and the public underwrote the cost of these enormous machines - by one thing.  Nuclear threat.
#Oct 4th, 2005 @ 11:13 PM
JChung2006
JChung2006
Did anyone else think it was hilarious when that guy freaked out when Scoble got too close to the memory bits?

Excellent video!  I must go visit this museum someday! Smiley
#Oct 4th, 2005 @ 11:53 PM
scobleizer
scobleizer
I'm the video guy
Nata1 wrote:
the suspense was killing me! but it started with a gap in there - no mention of the previous machine -

whered the bullet holes come from!!


If I remember the story right, the computer sat in a field in some guy's back yard and his kid used it for target practice.
#Oct 5th, 2005 @ 6:11 AM
KenIII
KenIII
Me smiling for the Camera
Yeah that fellow who got a bit upset needs a smoke break, he seems a bit stressed Big Smile

Good Video, I need to get back to the West Coast and visit it.

#Oct 5th, 2005 @ 7:21 AM
Nata1
Nata1
.Search - Google Appliance killer
scobleizer wrote:
Nata1 wrote: the suspense was killing me! but it started with a gap in there - no mention of the previous machine -

whered the bullet holes come from!!


If I remember the story right, the computer sat in a field in some guy's back yard and his kid used it for target practice.


I was thinking either the engineer flipped out, or it was some sort of CIA computer assasination (or whatever the cia was called back then Tongue Out)

If there was another pass through the museum, it would be incredible to see what types of problems all these machines were solving... when that becomes declassified that is
#Oct 5th, 2005 @ 7:23 AM
Nata1
Nata1
.Search - Google Appliance killer
JChung2006 wrote:
Did anyone else think it was hilarious when that guy freaked out when Scoble got too close to the memory bits?

Excellent video!  I must go visit this museum someday!


Yeah totally - I thought he was joking but when the dude totally flipped out -- I was eating dinner and inhaled some habenaro sauce - it keeps getting funnier every time I watch that
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