Comment by ricksunny

11 days ago

I'm a fan of CHM. That said there collections have (understandably) a rather Silicon-Valley-legacy-centric view of, erm, computer history. You'll find little mention, for example, of these tantalizing early mentions of alternative computer architectures (with pictures!) in NSA's predecessor OP-20-G, as posed alongside the then-nascent von Neumann architecture (also covered).

https://www.governmentattic.org/8docs/NSA-WasntAllMagic_2002...

There's solid representation of Boston and DEC in particular, for example, as well as IBM, so not all /that/ "Silicon-Valley-legacy-centric".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Computer_Museum,_Boston#Co...

  • Actually that link was helpful, thanks. The fact that CHM's early progenitor was called Digital Computer Museum in a 1979 out of Boston actually explains a lot. They were fundamentally distinguishing lineage from the likes of differentia analyzers, and (to a more muddled degree), from Rapid Selectors / Rapid Comparators.