"People and Computers" at the Computer Museum

Boston's Museum originated as a place where computer professionals could admire vintage machines and relive their industry's past. Since becoming a nonprofit educational organization and moving to its current downtown location, the museum has changed its orientation from glorifying artifacts to explaining how computers work and their impact on society. Each of its new exhibits addresses a different educational goal: Walk-Through Computer explains how microcomputers work; Tools and Toys lets visitors try out computer applications; and People and Computers: Milestones of a Revolution, which opened in June 1991, highlights the history of computing. People and Computers leaves behind the days when the museum displayed machines like sacred objects in antiseptic surroundings. With the help of an academic advisory panel, curator Gregory Welch has adopted an ambitious historical approach stressing themes such as alternative technologies and social trade-offs. The organizing principle of the exhibit is a series of nine milestones, beginning with punch-card machines in the 1930s and moving through mainframes, minis, and micros to the 1990s. Each milestone features a historically important computer in a re-creation of its original environment, whether a Cray-1 in a British weather station or a DEC PDP-8 being used to light a Broadway show. Labels describe the way each machine was used and raise technical and social issues. The exhibit uses the interactive workstations that have become a hallmark of the Com

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