In the early 1970s, the Smithsonian Institution turned down an offer to accept and preserve the groundbreaking MIT Whirlwind computer. Minicomputer pioneer Gordon Bell, who had co-authored the 1971 taxonomy book Computer Structures with Allen Newell, was appalled alongside Digital Equipment Corporation president Ken Olsen. Realizing that landmark hardware would disappear without active intervention, Bell set out to salvage computing artifacts himself, starting inside DEC's facility in Marlboro, Massachusetts.
From Coat Closet to Corporate Showcase
The preservation effort began modestly in a converted coat closet inside DEC's Marlboro lobby. In 1978, Gordon's wife Gwen Bell, whose formal background was in geography and urban planning, took charge as a full-time volunteer director to scale the initiative into a professional operation. On September 24, 1979, the team opened a 6,000-square-foot lobby exhibit under the name Digital Computer Museum.
Between 1980 and 1983, DEC provided over $1 million in operational funding. The initial collection expanded to 225 artifacts, featuring working PDP-1 and PDP-11 systems alongside components from the Whirlwind and MIT TX-0.
The Move to Boston's Museum Wharf
As the collection acquired massive hardware—including serial number 1 of the CDC 6600—housing and funding the project under a single corporate sponsor became unviable. To establish public independence, the organization reframed itself as an independent non-profit named The Computer Museum and secured a 53,000-square-foot facility at Museum Wharf in downtown Boston, sharing a renovated wool warehouse with the Boston Children's Museum.
On May 11, 1984, the museum held its preview opening. Operating with an initial staff of 18, annual attendance eventually reached 135,000 visitors who came to view mainframes, supercomputers, and air defense consoles.
An Evacuation to Leaky Warehouses
By the mid-1990s, New England's computing industry was shifting toward California, and local fundraising faltered. In response to mounting operational struggles in Boston, Stanford computer architecture instructor Len Shustek visited the museum and met Gwen Bell. In September 1995, Shustek joined the board to orchestrate a reboot of the mission in Silicon Valley.
The physical artifacts were evacuated west in 1996 into free storage space inside an abandoned, leaky warehouse at Moffett Field. The Boston corporation formally dissolved in 1999, re-incorporating in California as the independent Computer History Museum.
A Permanent Anchor in Mountain View
Operating out of temporary visible storage, the team raised capital to establish a permanent footprint. When the dot-com crash of 2001 unexpectedly freed up commercial real estate across Silicon Valley, the museum seized the opportunity. In 2002, it purchased a 120,000-square-foot building on seven acres on Shoreline Boulevard in Mountain View.
The acquisition gave the salvaged collection a permanent, climate-controlled home. In 2011, the museum opened its comprehensive landmark exhibition, Revolution: The First 2000 Years of Computing, securing a dedicated home for 2,000 years of computing history that began with a rejected mainframe.
AI-generated editorial illustration; not a documentary photograph.
Source: Computer History Museum: Celebrating 35 Years!
SIGNAL TITANS
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