Bozeman, Montana, a hot bed of technology. Down the street from the Museum of the Rockies is the American Computer and Robotics Museum. I asked at the welcome desk if they had my first computer on display. They did not, but they had one in the basement.
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- The museum is in a storefront.
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- The nod to robotics consisted of Robby the Robot, star of TV and movies.
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- This souvenir panel was woven in pure silk on a Jacquard loom at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The panel commemorates Columbus’ arrival in the West Indies on October 12, 1492.
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- The action of a Jacquard loom is controlled by thousands of punch cards, laced together. Each row of punched holes corresponds to a single row of a textile pattern, making it possible for complex patterns to be woven automatically.
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- This is an actual counter module from the ENIAC. Its purpose was to keep track of the number of repetitions (up to 9) that a given number was being transmitted. There were 20 such counters in the ENIAC..
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- Several previous lives ago I was forced to work briefly in UNIX with a DEC PDP computer.
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- Apollo Guidance computer.
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- Minuteman 1 Missile flight computer.
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- My first computer (not displayed), GENIAC.
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- I also had this analog computer that was really just an electronic slide rule.
GENIAC was a digital, non-electronic computer. Brass staples clamped to the bottom side of rotating fiberboard disks set the programming. The program was advanced step-by-step by turning the disk. Output was a series of lights. The box included a white paper on Boolean logic. More at Wikipedia.
They did have on display my second digital computer (TRS-80) and my third (128k Mac). I no longer have these or some of my early work computers (e.g., a Compaq 2 clone). I still have seven other computers not including Windows CE computers and a Palm. I’ll bequeath all these to the future Carl Henning Memorial Computer Museum.