On October 1, 2018, archivists at the Computer History Museum began sorting through 400 linear feet of physical software, personal papers, and corporate records spanning from 1943 to 2016. According to the museum, the materials—with the bulk of items dating between 1975 and 2000—formed the core of the Software History Processing Project. While software has reshaped global society over seven decades, much of its early physical documentation remained uncataloged in storage boxes, risking permanent loss.
Rescuing Paper and Magnetic Media from the Margins of Tech History
The scope of the processing effort presented a significant logistical challenge. The archive contained 294 linear feet of manuscript materials—including meeting minutes, memoranda, business plans, and research notebooks—alongside 101 linear feet of software containing approximately 10,500 individual items. Without systematic cataloging, historians faced a major constraint: fragile magnetic media and unindexed corporate records were difficult to locate or study.
Pioneers in the Stacks: Bemer, Bourne, and Early Systems
To organize the vast intake, project leaders selected twelve specific collections to process into public finding aids. These collections preserved the personal records of key individuals and organizations that built early computing infrastructure.
The personal papers of American programmer Robert Bemer were among the high-priority archives; Bemer had identified the potential Y2K programming bug as early as the 1950s and later founded a software company to tackle date-formatting issues. The initiative also targeted the papers of Charles Bourne, an online search pioneer who worked on the team that developed the first online search system at Stanford Research Institute. Other collections encompassed Radio Shack TRS-80 documentation, newsletters from early user groups, and business records from 1185 Design, an agency that crafted visual branding for emerging tech firms.
Inside the Preservation Lab at the Shustek Center
Processing the physical files required integrating paper archival standards with specialized digital preservation techniques. Work took place at the Shustek Center, the museum's offsite research and storage facility housing a dedicated software preservation lab operated by the Center for Software History.
A grant-funded project archivist worked alongside a team of museum volunteers to process each artifact. For physical media, staff cataloged the item, read the media contents, and deposited a digital surrogate into the museum's repository. To expand public access beyond physical visitors, ten percent of the manuscript material and vintage packaged software boxes were scanned directly for the museum's online catalog.
Funding the Infrastructure of Digital Memory
Securing the financial backed resources required competitive grant funding. The Computer History Museum submitted a proposal to the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, which selected the project as one of 13 approved grants from a pool of 39 applicant proposals.
The grant provided $99,528 in federal funding, while the museum contributed $81,325 in institutional cost-share resources, establishing a total project budget of $180,853 across an 18-month timeline ending in March 2020.
By publishing twelve completed finding aids to the museum's catalog and the Online Archive of California, along with collection-level records in WorldCat, the project established searchable public access to foundational technical records. Today, researchers and historians can directly trace how early code, software marketing, and pioneer papers laid the groundwork for modern technical infrastructure.
AI-generated editorial illustration; not a documentary photograph.
Source: New Grant Will Highlight Software’s History, User and Maker Stories, and Ongoing Global Impact
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