It turns out that the Computer History Museum in Mountain View was once The Computer Museum in Boston, next to the Children’s Museum on Fort Point Channel (an area I know pretty well from my days at Thomson just down Congress Street). Now it’s just a server’s throw away from Google headquarters, which might explain the almost complete absence of admittedly minor players in the development of computing and digital like, say, Microsoft and America Online.
While light on the ‘whys’ of the development of the industry in general and Silicon Valley in particular (such as the intersection of the defense/aerospace engineering industries with the 1960s counterculture so wonderfully chronicled in “What the Dormouse Said“), there’s lots of great gadgets and a reasonably thorough coverage of the development of machine computing. And of course, towards, the end, some misty-eyed moments of 1980s Christmas morning nostalgia (is that you, VIC-20, old friend?).
