Silicon Valley: Let's Get Nerdy!
The Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley offers a journey through time from the early beginnings of computing until the advanced future including Google Car, IBM punchcard systems and the hilarious $10,000 recipe computer.
- What: Computer History Museum
- Where: 1401 N Shoreline Blvd, Mountain View, CA 94043 [Map]
- When: 10am to 5pm (Monday & Tuesday closed)
- Price: $15
- Why: Learn everything about the history of computers
- Notes: Join the daily tours at the museum
- Similar: Miraikan Technology Museum in Tokyo
My amazing friends Serge & Nicole took time out of their day to take me to the Computer History Museum which was a 45 minute drive from downtown Oakland.
The museum is located in Mountain View, California with a $15 admission fee but well worth it. Enjoy oldies like the giant calculators, massive storage devices, evolution of programming languages and dishwashing robots.
The $10,000 recipe computer must have been the most hilarious piece of equipment at the museum created by Honeywell and was called the Honeywell 316. Reading or entering these recipes would have been nearly impossible for the average housewife or cook, since the user interface required the user to complete a two-week course just to learn how to program the device, using only toggle-switch input and binary light output.
Other items worth mentioning were the ancient joysticks, ridiculous attempts at keyboard concepts, office war of Apple2 vs IBM but above all the massive TESLA charging bay outside of the museum.
My favorite item at the museum was the Google Car, I couldn't believe how incredibly detailed the driving software is (see video).
Afterwards we drove to the Intel Museum, the supreme leader of consumer processors, where I was blown away by the microscopic scale on which transistors are created these days.
We ended this incredible day at a delicious Korean restaurant in Santa Clara where I had the Bibimbop.
My name is