Computer Museums and Artefacts

By January 14th, 2020

These pages attempt to give some of the history of CSIRO’s use of computing in its research, focussing mainly on the large shared systems and services.

Last updated: 22 April 2021.
Robert C. Bell
Status: Added Nigel Williams link.

This page is an off-shoot of my Computing History pages, and attempts to build information about computing museums.

 

Wikipedia has a list of computer museums, sorted by country.  There is also a list of online museums.

Wikipedia – List of computer museums

This has only 4 entries for Australia, only some of which are correct.

Here are updated links:

Australian Computer Museum Society Inc

Wikipedia – Powerhouse Museum – now the Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences

Monash – Museum of computing history

Other Australian sites include:

HP Computer Museum, Melbourne Australia

Max Burnet museum pictures

ex Control Data Australia Employees

The Museums Victoria collection is here

Clytech division of Clyde Industries Limited – A Broad History & Gallery

 

Other sites holding artefacts of historical interest to the development of computing in Australia include:

Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA USA.

The National Museum of Computing in Bletchley Park UK.

– cobweb – maybe moved to the Living Computer MuseumSeattle, Washington

National Cryptologic Museum

 

Seattle Living Computer Museum – https://livingcomputers.org/

Peter Hewston (ex-Csironet) has extensive holdings of early computing equipment – see CSIRONET News 162 – Dec 1981.  I have seen photographs of the collection – stunning.  Peter also provided a cache of documents about DCR/Csironet from Terry Holden.

John Morrissey (ex-Csironet) holds a module from the CSIRO DCR CDC Cyber 76.

Marco Cassetta (Ex-CSIRO IM&T) holds early personal computing examples.

Ron Kerpen (Ex-CSIRO Minerals, Clayton) has a collection of artefacts – see here.

 

Rob Bell’s collection is documented in the following Appendices from the CSIRO Computing History pages.

 

Nigel Williams has Tasmanian Computing History at retroComputingTasmania .

Appendix 5: References

(in preparation)

Appendix 6: Resources

(in preparation)