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SAN FRANCISCO—Mountain
View, California, soon will offer technology enthusiasts
something they can’t see anywhere else: an original copy
of Apple Inc.’s first business plan.
There’s
also a prototype for an Apple computer code-named Cadillac
that never made it to market, a 1982 Commodore 64, and
wooden wagon wheels that once graced a bar popular among
Silicon Valley engineers.
The
objects are among 22,000 housed in the Computer History
Museum, whose mission is to chart the evolution of
computer technology. The museum, in a two-story former
headquarters of Silicon Graphics Inc. on Highway 101, is
backed by pioneers including Steve Wozniak, who cofounded
Apple with Steve Jobs.
“The old
machines represent where we, those of us in the computer
field, came from,” said Wozniak, 57. “They tell a story of
amazing inventions even when the inventors had no idea
what it would lead to.”
Wozniak
said he plans to donate his most valuable artifact, a
150-page notebook with his handwritten code for the Apple
II computer. He and other tech luminaries are giving money
as well to help preserve the legacy of their young
industry that revolutionized the world.
The Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation, former Netscape Communications
Corp. technology chief Eric Hahn and Palm Inc. cofounder
Donna Dubinsky each donated at least $10 million. Other
contributors include EBay Inc. founder Pierre Omidyar and
venture capitalist John Doerr, an early backer of Google
Inc.
The museum
displays some of the earliest personal computers,
including an Apple I and International Business Machine
Corp.’s failed PC Junior. It has an Altair 8800 from Micro
Instrumentation & Telemetry Systems, the machine that
inspired Gates and Paul Allen to write the software that
led to their founding of Microsoft Corp. in 1975.
Reaching
back further, there is a 1935 Enigma machine used by the
Nazis to encrypt messages during World War II and one of
the 40 panels that made up the Electronic Numerical
Integrator and Computer. The 1946 Eniac, the first
programmable digital computer, ran calculations for the
hydrogen bomb and operated until 1955, when it was struck
by lightning.
Some
donors must be convinced that equipment and ephemera such
as manuals, software and sales brochures are worth saving.
In August 2006, curators raced to a warehouse in a small
German village to rescue forerunners of modern computers
that were destined for the dump.
“People
don’t view it as historic because it’s all happened in the
past 50 years,” said Dubinsky, a member of the museum’s
board. “We have this incredible opportunity to collect
things today to help future scholars understand what
happened—why it was important—and we can do it while many
of the protagoanists are still around.”
Dubinsky
donated an early Palm Pilot designed by the handheld
computer company she started in 1992. She persuaded
venture capitalist Mike Markkula, who backed Cupertino,
California-based Apple, to contribute his copies of the
computer maker’s original business plan. Those papers
eventually will be available for public viewing, said Len
Shustek, chairman of the museum’s board.
Google
founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page donated one of the
first computers used to power their Internet search
engine. A cabinet of calculators displays
Hewlett-Packard’s HP 35, the first handheld machine to
perform trigonometric functions. The device made the slide
rule obsolete, Hewlett-Packard says.
“Every
object is pregnant with politics and meaning far beyond
the technical,” said Dag Spicer, senior curator.
The museum
grew out of the personal collection of Gordon Bell, a
Microsoft senior researcher, and his wife Gwen. It was
displayed in Boston starting in 1979 before a plan emerged
to create a nonprofit center in California.
In 2002,
the group bought a building down the road from Microsoft’s
California campus and Google’s headquarters in the heart
of Silicon Valley, 56 kilometers south of
San Francisco.
The museum, which opened in 2003, attracted more than
40,000 visitors last year and has a $4.1 million annual
budget.
“These
machines are works of art,” said Allen Rosenzweig, an
engineer and volunteer docent who gives 90-minute tours of
600 items on exhibit. He pointed to a row of Cray Inc.
supercomputers, once the most expensive in the world, and
said, “They’re worth preserving.”
Spicer and
four curators meet Tuesdays to review potential additions
to the collection of 15 million documents, 5,000 videos
and films, 5,000 software programs and 20,000 photographs.
The Smithsonian Institution, in comparison, has about
3,000 objects in its computer collection, said David
Allison, a curator at the Washington-based organization.
The rescue
mission last year in
Castrop-Rauxel,
Germany,
netted a rare 1920s fax machine and one-of-a-kind
mechanical banking machines created by German makers who
were banned from using more advanced technology after
World War II, Spicer said.
“The
artifacts themselves are merely props,” said Netscape’s
Hahn, who plans to donate documents from Arpanet, the
government network that was the precursor to the Internet.
“What we’re saving are the fascinating stories behind the
artifacts.’’ | 
