Personal Collection

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America's Information Age Museum

a personal history of computer communicates from 1968 to 1988 based on over interviews conducted in 1988. The site reconstructs the co-evolving history of technologies and organizations leading up to the public demonstrations that computers from many venders can share information: the necessary condition for the internet.

The Living Computer Museum, located in Seattle, Washington, is a showcase for a collection of machines, peripherals, software, and documentation, whose primary focus is on interactive timesharing systems. Although we have many stories associated with the history of our systems, we firmly believe that the best way for people to fully understand computing systems is by experiencing them. Hardware, alone, cannot fully illustrate what it was like to use these machines. Software, information, and human interaction are needed in order to complete the picture.

This site provides a description in English of the two first computers made in Italy around 1960. One of these is said to be the first transistorized computer ever marketed. The site also presents some positive and negative aspects of these computers, as well as some human aspects of their environment.

More than 50 years ago, in 1951, Leo 1, a British computer, became the world's first business computer. This is the site of the LEO Computers Society, membership of which is open to all ex-employees of LEO Computers and its succeeding companies, and anyone who worked on a LEO computer

Mr. Bemer's accomplishments resonate so deeply one almost assumes they have been with us always, snatched out of the ether by a collective consciousness, instead of having been the creation of one man. A short list includes: helped create COBOL (as in "Grandfather of" [1]) coined the words COBOL [2] and CODASYL [3] invented the ESCape sequence created the PICTURE clause helped create and standardize the ASCII character set (as in "Father of" [4]) put the backslash into the ASCII set helped create the 8-bit per byte standard"

Commodore's founder Jack Tramiel wanted a low priced computer to follow up the PET and fend off the Japanese. Helped along with a notable ad. campaign featuring Star Trek's Willam Shatner, and selling for just US$299, the VIC20 peaked at an amazing 9000 units per day. The VIC was the first computer to sell more than 1 million units. As these ads show the VIC was a worldwide success which heralded the enf of C= PET developement

Various sites about the history of computers and the Internet

Countless pages about the Internet and histories of various computer-related topics.