Computer Museum @ Mountain View

Its nice rainy day. Water on the floor, wet car and luckily less traffic on noon. You can see all positive points to go ahead and do as you wish ! Huh, not talking for romatic scene but its a simple city museum atmosphere. Its really cool wind out and raining mildly. 

Leaving room in the morning we had decided couple of shows to attend. Just at the enterance, we confirmed all shows and in our list one surprise show added for Macintosh History on its birthday. Felt very lucky !

Computer Museum at Mountain View is really special. First show was scheduled for "The Babbage Engine". There are only two engines in the world like that and I saw one of them. Containing near 8000 parts in the design and it can solve 7th order equation in just one circular shot. It weighs nearly 5 tons but its very accurate. Its really amazed to see all its functionality and efforts put by Babbage at that time.

The very next show was to have overview on the punch card and its revolution. It also explains how early computers were developed. After watching this, we can easily co-relate the hit-miss theory, sensors, all digital parts and all in the practical. To be surprised, the latest printer and punch card still follows the same concept. 

One interesting part to print my name printing program on "IBM 1401". It is the first successful computer by IBM. It uses the character card to program. One mistake and whole bunch of cards are in waste. Thick power supply, bulky in weight and noisy at action. Its just basic char of those machines !

What next, yes you predict right. The Mac History. 

Whole Macintosh innovation, experiments with Apple 1, Apple 2, Laisi, etc. are available in museum. Not less but volunteer are very willing there to describe Steve Jobs' journey from Mac to Pixar and again back to Mac. The evolution of iPod and its model for the demos.

There are also more visionary machines are available for demo. That includes punch card revolution in both direction "HW" and "SW". 

Nice to spare couple of hours here. Good Practical site !