Computer History Museum

<p>The object consists of a number of components housed in a wooden case. The case is divided vertically into two compartments. The CPU was likey operated using a numeric keypad and keyboard. The compartment in the front on the left has a status display and 8 rows of modules, most of which are missing. Two rectangular holes have been cut into the right side of the wooden case. On the front right are 3 rows of modules and a number of controls, meters, and fuses. Sample labels include MAGNETIC TAPES, CLOCK, PUNCH, KITCHEN CONSOLE, TRUNK, FUSE, and BLOWERS. On the back left are the back side of the module racks and various hand-wired bundles. On the back right are the attached power cord and a blower.</p>

<p>Computer is attached to a wooden base.</p>

<p>Small model of a Jacquard loom with paper punch cards. A long metal handle protrudes from the top-right. Bell inventory sticker (B117.80) affixed to underside of wooden base.</p>

<p>SRI International&rsquo;s first prototype computer mouse, by Douglas Engelbart. Constructed by Bill English, the mouse rolled on two sharp wheels facing 90 degrees from each other.</p>

<p>The object is a base computer for the Imagination Machine. It contains a QWERTY keyboard, a place to set a game console, a connection for attaching the game console, a connection for a program cartridges,a casssette tape recorder, a loudspeaker with a volume control, a microphone jack, a power indicator light, an ON/OFF switch, and a 5-pin DIN power input connector.</p>

<p>Original white porcelain teapot on which the widely distributed teapot data set is based. The teapot has frequently been used to test techniques of rendering three-dimensional objects using computer graphics. Teapots rendered as a wire frame outline- Warnock- Gouraud and Phong shaded have been published as well as many versions with simulated reflections of an environment- and shape distortions. The frequency of use of the teapot as a test object in computer graphics has given it the status of a benchmark. Data for the teapot created and input by Martin Newell- 1974- University of Utah- Salt Lake City.</p>

<p>This object is the PSP-2 -- the Portable Speech Processor 2 -- created in late 1978 at Stanford University through the leadership of Professor Robert White. This device was part of a very early experimental portable cochlear implant developed there, which was influential in the overall development of the technology. Approximately one million cochlear implants have been used by the hard of hearing and deaf people. The cochlear implants provide functional hearing, enabling users to hold conversations, develop spoken language skills, and much more. The team at Stanford working on this early, perhaps first, portable, multi-channel cochlear implant at the end of the 1970s was the same team that, in the 1960s, had been the first to implant a multi-channel cochlear implant in a patient, and introduced the term &ldquo;cochlear implant.&rdquo; Originally worn in a backpack by its users, this PSP-2 unit was responsible for taking incoming audio and processing it into signals then sent through the implanted electrodes into the user&rsquo;s auditory nerve. This PSP-2 unit uses several CMOS microprocessors from Intersil (IM6100) and 1K RAM chips to form a parallel, multi-processor system. Programming for the speech processor took place on a DEC PDP-11. A note taped to the top cover of the object says, "World's first portable cochlear implant signal processor + power supply."</p>

<p>This console was the user interface to the SAGE (Semi- Automatic Ground Environment) computer system known as the "FSQ-7." Begun in 1952 (and operational six years later), SAGE became the first U.S. continental air defense system, linking dozens of radar stations, weather bureaus, airports, and air force command centers together into a real-time early warning system. It comprised redundant CPUs, modems, "light gun" input, and earned its IBM, its prime contractor, over $1 billion in revenues over the life of the system. Despite it's complement of more than 50,000 vacuum tubes, the FSQ-7 was highly reliable (&gt; 99.97% uptime). Gray with yellow scope</p>

<p>This device is the earliest head-mounted stereoscopic display and the earliest precursor to virtual reality goggles. Watch this CHM lecture by Sutherland and Sproul for the full story: https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102639877</p>

<p>Object is a printed circuit board (PCB) panel with rows of magnetic cores installed. On the core side, "CORNELL B-B" is etched on the PCB. There is a piece of tape on the back with "8 &amp; 9" written on it, and "LAND" written on the board in marker. This analog-biased core memory plane was used in the Adaptive system ("A-unit," in modern terminology the "hidden layer" of a simple three layer feed forward neural network). Each core stored the weight of a connection between neural units. Being analog, the output response from each core had a roughly sigmoid or S-shaped curve to it, rather than a flat square jump as a digital core might have, and about a hundred different states could be read out of each core. This was a component of the Tobermory Perceptron, the second of two perceptrons implemented in hardware by Frank Rosenblatt and his collaborators at the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory in Buffalo, NY and Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, the other being its more famous precursor the Mark I Perceptron. Unlike the Mark I, which was built to model visual perception and pattern recognition, the Tobermory was built to model auditory pattern recognition.</p>

<p>Object is a small metal box. On the front face is a small grille and a spring clip to hold it in a pocket. On the top left corner is a three-position slide switch. On the top right is a plastic wheel (volume control?). The lower rear case swings up to reveal a battery compartment. The Sonotone 1010 is described in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonotone_1010 It is also mentioned and depicted in: https://hearingaidmuseum.com/gallery/General_Info/GenInfoTransBody/info/generalinfo-transistor-body.htm Material provided by the donor includes this text: "First commercial product using a transistor... Two Sonotone subminiature vacuum tubes, NPN grown junction transistor. Sonotone was unique among midcentury hearing aid manufacturers because this company manufactured the tubes and the actual hearing aids. All other major ... companies of the time... purchased the tubes from... suppliers such as Raytheon... Sonotone did not enter the transistor business ... using purchased transistors..."</p>

<p>Paper attached reads: "Macintosh, not a plus(800k disk drive), 128 Enhanced (upgraded to 512), w/ External Drive (400k) internal mac drive ~400k drive."</p>

<p>Machine has a non-standard fan in the back of the machine. There is a silver "MITS ALTAIR 8800 COMPUTER" label on the bottom of the face plate. The Altair 8800 kit was introduced as the cover story on the January 1975 edition of Popular Electronics. Though 'home-brew' experimental systems exsisted well before the Altair, none had the Altair's wide- reaching popularity. Word length: 8 bits. CPU Circuitry: Intel 8080. Primary Memory: 256 Bytes. Price: $ 397. The Altair inspired Bill Gates, then at Harvard University, to write a BASIC assembler so that users could easily program the machine. This was the start of Microsoft. MITS was sold to Pertec and the Altair line did not last long. Exhibit label: The Altair 8800 is commonly thought of as the first successful "personal computer" or "PC." Ed Roberts, the creator os the machine, coined the term; he saw the personal computer as distinct from hobby machines, development systems, and industrial machines in that the PC would run programs designed for larger computers while remaining affordable and retaining a conventional console interface. Roberts' company, MITS, built calculators and terminal systems throughout the early 1970s, but "when we found out about the Intel 8080 in late 1973, we started design on the Altair, which was finished in the summer of 1974." Initially, programs had to be entered a line at a time with the switches on the front panel. Soon, MITS and other manufactureres were offering expansion memory boards, and the 4K BASIC interpreter written by Bill Gates and Paul Allen (original paper tape on display at The Computer Museum) became a standard. The demand for the $395.00 machine exceeded MITS' wildest expectations. More machines were sold in the first day (through a Popular Eletcronics cover story) than the company expected to sell during the entire lifetime of the product. Roberts point out that the Altair increased the installed base of computers by 1% each month during 1975-76. The company was eventually superceded by other, more powerful and felxible computers.</p>