Sunday 26th August, before starting my crazy week at VMworld, we (I, Andrea and Fabio) decided to go the a special place for every IT geek out there: the Computer History Museum. Located in Mountain View, CA, in the middle of the Silicon Valley and less than 1 hour drive from San Francisco, is itself a piece of history: its location once was the headquarter of Silicon Graphics.
Inside the museum, it will take you at least two hours to visit it all: basically because every piece of history you will find here has a special meaning for many of us. Without any will to give you a complete list, there are inside some elements that caught my interest (and for some of them even few tears…):
– an electronic typewriter from italian company Olivetti, when during the ’60s even IBM was sending its engineers to Olivetti to learn their new technologies
– a Univac I computer, dated 1951; it’s the first commercial computer, made by Remington Rand. I have at home an Univac 494 plate dated dated 1969, a gift from a customer
– a Cray-1 supercomputer, 1976
– the first Google cluster
– a complete line of Commodore personal computers, just like a C64, my first one, the one that ignited my passion for computers!
There are many other awesome collectibles, and I’m sure everyone of you will be amazed or touched by one of them. Here is a small fotoset I made:
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As you can see, we ended up the tour by the Google Car, and we discovered they also made a Google Bike; I cannot imagine some rider trying to climb a San Francisco hill with that “bike”.
Finally, a gift for all of you: if you are older than 25-30, you do not need any explanation about this video. If you are around San Francisco or Silicon Valley, go to the Computer History Museum!