The Computer History Museum (CHM) is a museum located in Mountain View, California. It shows stories and objects from Silicon Valley and the Information Age. The museum also looks at how the development of computers changed the world and affected people's lives.
History
The museum began in 1968 when Gordon Bell started collecting historical items. At the same time, others worked to save the Whirlwind computer. This effort became the Museum Project, which held its first exhibit in 1975 in a converted coat closet in a DEC lobby. In 1978, the museum, now called The Digital Computer Museum (TDCM), moved to a larger DEC lobby in Marlborough, Massachusetts. It opened to the public in September 1979. Maurice Wilkes gave the first lecture at TDCM in 1979, and lectures have continued since then.
In 1982, TDCM became The Computer Museum (TCM). In 1984, TCM moved to Boston and opened on Museum Wharf.
In 1996 and 1997, the TCM History Center (TCMHC) was created. NASA provided a building at Moffett Field, which was once a furniture store for the Naval Base. Many items from TCM were sent there.
In 1999, TCMHC became an official organization, and TCM stopped operating. TCM’s remaining items were sent to TCMHC in 2000. Because the Boston Museum of Science had already used the name TCM, TCMHC changed its name to Computer History Museum (CHM) in 2000.
In 2002, CHM opened a new building in Mountain View, California, at 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd. The building was previously used by Silicon Graphics.
In 2009, CHM hosted the National Inventors Hall of Fame’s annual ceremony. This event was special because all 15 inductees that year worked on semiconductor technology, and 2009 marked the 50th anniversary of the integrated circuit.
The facility was later repaired and updated with a $19 million renovation. It reopened in January 2011. John Hollar, a former media executive, became CEO in July 2008. Dan'l Lewin, a former technology executive, took over as CEO in March 2018. Marc Etkind, a former NASA communications leader, was named President and CEO on February 19, 2025.
Public programs
The Computer History Museum offers regular public events (currently called "CHM Live") where important people from Silicon Valley and the global technology industry, such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Reid Hoffman, Elon Musk, and Eric Schmidt, speak about the influence of technology. These events also include discussions by academics and historians. The Museum also holds special events to celebrate important technology milestones, such as the 40th anniversary of the Apple Macintosh and the 50th anniversary of Ethernet. These events include panels where experts discuss the history and importance of major computing technologies. Recordings of past events are available on the Museum's YouTube channel. Additionally, the Museum organizes family-friendly TechFest events.
Collections and exhibition space
The Computer History Museum claims to have the largest and most important collection of computing items in the world. This collection includes many special items that are not found elsewhere, such as a Cray-1 supercomputer, a Cray-2, a Cray-3, the Utah teapot, the 1969 Neiman Marcus Kitchen Computer, an Apple I, and an example of the first generation of Google’s custom-designed web servers. The collection has about 90,000 items, including photographs, films, 4,000 feet (1,200 meters) of organized documents, and several hundred gigabytes of software.
The museum’s oral history program records video interviews about the history of computing, including topics such as computer systems, networking, data-processing, memory, and data-storage. As of 2021, more than 1,000 interviews have been recorded. These include panel discussions about the origins of the IBM PC and the hard disk drive, as well as interviews with individuals such as Joanna Hoffman, Steve Chen, Dame Stephanie Shirley, and Donald Knuth.
The museum’s 25,000 square foot (2,300 square meter) exhibit called “Revolution: The First 2000 Years of Computing” opened to the public on January 13, 2011. It shows the history of computing in 20 galleries, starting with the abacus and ending with the Internet. The entire exhibition is also available online.
On January 28, 2017, the museum launched a new exhibit called “Make Software: Change the World!” covering 6,000 square feet (560 square meters). This exhibit explains how software changes people’s lives. Designed for middle schoolers and older, it includes multimedia, touchscreen activities, and a software lab where visitors can try coding.
Other exhibits include a restored PDP-1 minicomputer, two restored IBM 1401 computers, and a restored IBM Ramac 350 disk drive.
An operating difference engine designed by Charles Babbage in the 1840s and built by the Science Museum of London was displayed until January 31, 2016. It had been on loan since 2008 from its owner, Nathan Myhrvold, a former Microsoft executive.
The museum also has a large collection of software, managed by Al Kossow, a former Apple employee hired in 2006. Kossow is responsible for preserving and organizing the software collection, as well as creating software-themed exhibits. Before working full-time at the museum, Kossow contributed to its efforts and runs Bitsavers, an online collection of historical computer manuals and software.
In 2010, the museum started collecting source code from important software, beginning with Apple’s MacPaint 1.3, written in assembly language and Pascal. This code was made available for public download.
Other software additions include the APL programming language in 2012, Adobe’s Photoshop 1.0.1 source code in 2013, and Postscript in 2022. Microsoft donated the source code for SCP MS-DOS 1.25 and other versions of MS-DOS and Word for Windows 1.1a. On October 21, 2014, the source code for the Xerox Alto was released. On January 19, 2023, the Apple Lisa source code was made public.
On June 23, 1990, the Walk-Through Computer exhibit opened to help visitors learn how computers work. This interactive exhibit included a desktop computer, a large monitor, a 25-foot (7.6 meter) keyboard, and a 40-inch (1,016 mm) trackball used to control the World Traveler program. In the Software Theater, animations and hardware videos were shown alongside the World Traveler program to explain how software works. The exhibit closed in 1995 and reopened in 1995 as the Walk-Through Computer 2000, featuring updated monitors, 3D graphics, and interactive activities, such as changing the pits on a giant CD-ROM and seeing the changes on a screen.
In 2016, the museum included a Liquid Galaxy in the “Going Places: A History of Silicon Valley” exhibit. This feature allowed visitors to fly to 20 preselected locations. An exhibit about the history of autonomous vehicles, from torpedoes to self-driving cars, was also displayed.
Fellows
The CHM Fellow Awards Program recognizes well-known technology pioneers for their important achievements and major help in advancing computing and the development of the digital age. CHM Fellows include men and women whose ideas have changed the world and impacted almost everyone today. The first Fellow was Rear Admiral Grace Hopper in 1987. By 2025, the program has grown to include 100 members. Nominations for Fellows are open to the public and can be submitted any time of the year.