Research

Surrounded by the lessons of history, the Computer Museum in São Paulo, Brazil reopened last April/ 2005. A nice chance for the public to view some of the 5,000 computer artifacts in its new 11.000 sq.m home. The museum exhibit showcases about 500 of the collection's most notable artifacts. Among them twoimposing Remington Rand tabulators,the 1401 first IBM computer --with just 4 kb memory, a B500 Burroughs, a PDP8E machine etc.

Computer Preservation in Leicestershire, UK The Retro Computer Museum is a registered charity dedicated to the benefit of the public for the preservation, display and public experience of computer and console systems from the 1960's onwards. Charity registration no. 1146912.

Keith Lightfoot was one of the early pioneers of computer users in New Zealand. Initially programming in Machine Code and MPL on an ICT 1301 mainframe in 1969; then moving to Cobol on an ICL 1901. Database design skills followed in London whilst working for Honeywell, then Keith moved back to New Zealand to program Burroughs and NCR mainframe computers.

Because of about 150(ish) of these British Built and designed machines, which had their heyday in the early 1960's. This is the only machine left in the world, which in any way can be described as working. If this machine is not restored then there is little chance that either of the other remaining two 1301's in the world, will ever be restored. The machine represents a perfect example of a second-generation computer, which marks the move from valve technology to transistor based logic. It also defines the early use of Printed circuit Boards to implement the logic boards which are its building blocks and is also an example of the very early the use of Germanium transistors instead of the more common Silicon transistors in use today.

Time-Line computer Archive Ltd is a not for profit company, our aim is to collect, restore and exhibit all types of early computers and electronics.

The Museum has just been officially awarded Provisional Accredited Status by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA). The MLA’s Museum Accreditation Scheme sets nationally agreed standards for all museums in the UK. The Museum of Computing’s award proves that it measures up, meeting the guidelines on how it is run, how it looks after its collections and the services it provides its visitors. Andrew Motion, Chair of MLA, said: “Being awarded Accreditation is an impressive achievement. It recognises the high standard and service that the Museum of Computing provides and acknowledges the hard work of the volunteers.”

These pages describe a large collection of computers that has been built over the last 20 years by me, Prof. Jim Austin.. The collection holds over 500 machines and focuses on small machines to very large main frames and super computers. The aim has been to save machines that would otherwise be forgotten! The collection is unique from others on the Internet as it concentrates on machines from each generation - these are defined by the technology they are based on i.e. mechanical, relay, valve, transistor, small scale integration, medium scale integration and large scale integration. The machines are from 1960's onwards, often used only for scientific research and many of which you won't find anywhere else on the web. Many of the machines are not indexed here, I will get around to it some day. All the systems shown on the site are real and in the collection. These range from mechanical machines, relay machines, parts of valve based machines, through transistors to VLSI.

This site will offer you information about all sorts of home computers and game computers from the seventies and eighties. Computers today and computer games are much more advanced, but it's nice to go back and look at where it all began. From the Altair to the latest Dell touch screen laptop, computers have evolved in an exponential and dramatic fashion. Their history, anecdotes about their development and the people behind them, like Ralph Baer who invented the Magnavox Odyssey waiting at a bus terminal and of course Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari.

The computer was born not for entertainment or email but out of a need to solve a serious number-crunching crisis. By 1880 the U.S. population had grown so large that it took more than seven years to tabulate the U.S. Census results. The government sought a faster way to get the job done, giving rise to punch-card based computers that took up entire rooms. Today, we carry more computing power on our smartphones than was available in these early models. The following brief history of computing is a timeline of how computers evolved from their humble beginnings to the machines of today that surf the Internet, play games and stream multimedia in addition to crunching numbers.

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