and tangibly support Babbage’s reputation as a computing pioneer.

Examples of both types of machine are on display, including Babbage’s original trial piece for the Difference Engine No. 1, a portion of the mill of the Analytical Engine, and the first completed engine, the Difference Engine No. 2, built by the museum in 1991 for the 200 centenary of Babbage’s birth. With over 4,000 parts, and weighing five tons, the machine can calculate numbers up to 31 digits long.

The Science Museum’s displays also reflect Britain’s role at the forefront of computing research in the 1940s and as central to the creation of a new global computing industry in the 1950s. During this period, Britain created the digital, electronic computer, the code-breaking Colossus machine (1943), the first stored-program computer, the Manchester Baby (1948), and the first business computer, the Lyons LEO (1951). Artifacts from all of these machines are on display in the Computing Gallery.

The Science Museum’s galleries also showcase three important complete computers from this pioneering industry: the Pilot ACE computer (1950), embodying the original ideas of the mathematician Alan Turing and his conceptual discovery of the general-purpose machine; the Ferranti Pegasus (1959), which was fast and reliable and is now the oldest working electronic computer in the world; and ERNIE (1957), the first random-num-ber generator for the national Premium Bonds that used a hybrid of valves and transistors and generated physical random events through a series of neon gas diodes.

Contemporary machines on display in our Making the Modern World gallery include the Cray 1-A supercomputer (circa 1976) and an Apple 1 (1976). Displayed side by side, the research machine (the Cray was installed at Aldermaston Atomic Weapons Establishment in England) and the Apple kit home computer built by enthusiasts provide a strong message about the shift to personal computing during the late 1970s.

Since its founding, the museum has always had a remit to display contemporary science and technology alongside its historical collections. In doing

the science
museum’s collections
celebrate computing
as one of the
most important
technologies of
our time.

so it has presented new computing technologies using art and interactive elements, through a computer arts booth (1975) and exhibitions like The Challenge of the Chip (1980). Today, visitors flock to view Listening Post by Ben Rubin and Mark Hassan, an art installation that presents a dynamic and visually enticing portrait of Internet communication.

In addition to the public galleries, the Science Museum Library and The collections in Swindon offer original scientific and technical books and journals, alongside computing archives of important historical interest. These include the personal papers and technical drawings of Charles Babbage, Mike Woodger from the National Physical Laboratory, and Stanley Gill, who was significant in early U.K. computing policy.

The Archives Collection holds a range of computer literature, most notably through the ICL archive that contains significant information about the products and history of the merged companies that became ICL, including British Tabulating Machine, Powers-Samas, ICT, and English Electric.

The Science Museum Library collection also holds trade literature specific to a particular machine, installation, or company.

 

Tilly Blyth ( [e-mail]) is the curator of computing and information at the science museum in london, u.k.

the Deutches museum

Hartmut Petzold

 

The Deutsches Museum is one of the world’s biggest and oldest museums for science and technology, today with approximately 1. 3 million visitors a year. Founded in 1903 as a “Museum of Masterpieces of Science and Technology,” in 1906 Kaiser Wilhelm II placed the foundation stone for the new museum building on an island in the Isar river in the Bavarian capital Munich; the museum was completed and opened in 1925. The fundamental idea, which continues influencing the museum, involves presenting the newest “masterpieces” as a logical and historical extension of their precursors. From the very beginning this conception has been both criticized and also copied in many ways.

Planning the exhibition “ Informatik” (English translation: computer science) began in 1983. At that time, there were only some experts knowing the Internet, and the personal computer was an expensive and special device. The “Informatik” exhibit opened in 1988; the initiator of the exhibition project was Professor Friedrich L. Bauer, who involved many university- and academic-based experts and collaborators. Bauer, as a mathematician and co-founder of computer science as a new academic discipline, had no difficulties presenting the historical instruments and machines as ancestors of the computer.

The museum’s exhibition room borders on the exhibitions on microelectronics, telecommunication, and geodetics. It is subdivided into cabinet-like thematic units by numerous walls providing explanatory text. Therefore visitors do not typically initially notice that the middle of the hall is marked by Konrad Zuse’s early program controlled calculators Z3 and Z4. The Z4’s original parts are presented in the same condition as they were in 1955, when they were used at the ETH Zurich. The Z3, representing Zuse’s priority as the inventor and builder of the first free programmable automatic calculator, working in 1941, and anticipating an essential part of John von Neumann’s classical computer concept from 1945, is a reconstruction, built by Zuse himself from 1961–1962 (the original