The Computer History Museum’s new exhibit, Retro Games: From Atari to Xbox, showcases classic games and gaming systems from CHM’s collection and runs from May 24 through August 4, 2024. You may remember many of the games featured, but you might not know the history behind the machines that ran these addictive diversions.

Today, the video game market is divided between consoles and gaming PCs, but throughout history the line between them has often been blurry. These two categories are closer than you think.

Early Consoles and PCs: late 1970s–early 1980s

The 1970s saw the birth of the video game and PC industries, thanks to the invention of the microprocessor by Intel in 1971. Early PCs, like the Altair 8800, were hobbyist kits that required technical skills to use. Video games, starting with arcade machines like Atari’s Pong in 1972, were accessible to all. But early home video game consoles could only play a limited number of built-in games, usually Pong or a close imitation, that were hard-wired into the electronics.

1976’s Channel F by Fairchild Semiconductor, was the first console to use a microprocessor and interchangeable cartridges to hold games. Because microprocessors are computers on a chip, games can be written as software and stored in a cartridge’s read-only memory chip, or “ROM.”

The most successful console of the 1970s and early 1980s was the Atari 2600. In 1985, Nintendo took the lead in the US with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Both were initially branded as computers for the home: the 2600 as the “Video Computer System,” or VCS, and the NES as the “Family Computer,” or Famicom in Japan. They used variants or clones of the MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor, the same chip used in the Apple II, BBC Micro, Commodore 64, and Atari 800 home computers.

The MOS Technology 6502 was a low-cost 8-bit microprocessor popular in both game consoles and home PCs. Photo by Aurora Tucker.

Atari 2600 (102730637) with Pitfall! game cartridge (102705661).

Japanese market Nintendo Famicom (102716419) with Super Mario Bros. game cartridge (102746997).

Atari entered the home PC market with the Atari 400 and 800 in 1979, which had similar hardware to 1977’s 2600 console but with better graphics, sound, memory, and expandability. These computers also had cartridge slots, making them popular for gaming. 1982’s Commodore 64, also a popular gaming computer with a cartridge slot was cheaper than competitors and became the best-selling computer of all time. Despite their gaming features, both the Atari 800 and Commodore 64 were considered PCs, not consoles.

Commodore 64 computer (102674084) with joystick (102647138) and Castle Wolfenstein game (102689439). Monitor not shown.

Some companies tried to create hybrid systems by creating add-on devices for existing consoles, turning them into full-blown PCs. APF’s Imagination Machine and Mattel’s Intellivision were both unsuccessful attempts at this strategy.

APF Imagination Machine microcomputer (102801477) with attached APF MP1000 game console (102801478) and Blackjack game cartridge (102801482).

1990s: PCs as an Open Gaming Platform

By the late 1980s, the PC market began to shift from proprietary systems to an open platform governed by industry standards. 1981’s IBM PC, though initially proprietary, used standard components and licensed its operating system, DOS, from Microsoft. This allowed other companies to create compatible “clones,” leading to the rise of the Wintel (Windows and Intel) PC.

Consoles remained proprietary, with Nintendo and Sega dominating the market in the late 1980s, followed by Sony’s PlayStation in the 1990s. Game consoles were designed like appliances and could not be easily upgraded like PCs, which could add new components, allowing them to evolve over time. By the mid-1990s, PCs with aftermarket graphics and sound cards were outperforming many dedicated game consoles. The debut of 3D graphics cards and new game genres like first-person shooters further boosted PC gaming.

Quake I CD-ROM disc and manual (102752170). First person shooter games like Quake drove the development of 3D graphics hardware for PCs in the 1990s.

During the mid-1990s, Microsoft also created DirectX, a dedicated software layer for games on Windows. Prior to this, most PC games ran directly on DOS since it was faster and gamers didn’t like slowdowns. Windows 95 removed this option, so Microsoft provided DirectX to give game developers direct access to PC hardware such as graphics cards.

Xbox: Console or PC?

In the 1990s, video game companies began integrating PC technologies into their consoles. CD-ROMs, which stored more data and were cheaper than ROM cartridges or floppy disks, became common first on PCs, with games such as 1993’s Myst. The Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation both used CD-ROMs for storage, with Nintendo’s N64 being a noteworthy holdout. However, Nintendo did incorporate 3D graphics technology by partnering with Silicon Graphics for the N64. 3D graphics and optical disc-based media marked a significant shift in video game console technology.

The Sony PlayStation 2 (102752166, 102752167) is the bestselling video game console of all time. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (102752169) is the top selling game for the PS2, with Final Fantasy X coming in at 5th (102752168).

In the early 2000s, Microsoft was trying to expand into the living room and saw Sony’s PlayStation 2, which also played DVD movies, as a threat. Microsoft responded with the Xbox in 2001, a system that was essentially a Windows PC turned into a console. It used an Intel microprocessor, NVIDIA graphics chips, and a hard drive, and it ran a specialized version of Windows with DirectX. This allowed game developers to easily port PC games to the Xbox.

Xbox debug kit (102718658), Xbox controller (102752163), Halo: Combat Evolved game (102752162) and Halo Masterchief action figure. Halo’s popularity drove sales of the Xbox. Photo by Aurora Tucker.

Gaming in the 2020s

Both the Xbox and PlayStation now use PC technologies, with many games based on Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, which was first used in the PC first-person shooter game Unreal in 1998. First-person shooters, a genre that originated on PCs in the 1990s, became popular on consoles with games like Halo and Call of Duty in the 2000s.

Today, the main difference between game consoles and gaming PCs is cost and upgradeability. The same types of games are available for both through online stores. Vintage console games like Street Fighter II can be played on PCs, while complex simulations like Civilization can be enjoyed on consoles.

Console or PC, does it matter what you’re playing on if you’re having fun?

Get Your Game On

We hope to see you at CHM for the Retro Games showcase—you’ll even be able to play some games, and you can discover more about games in the Revolution exhibition. Retro Games closes August 4, 2024, so get your ticket now!

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On January 24, 1984, Apple Computer launched its new Macintosh computer in a Super Bowl ad that aired only once. Alluding to George Orwell’s novel 1984, it both impressed and bewildered the millions who viewed it. Directed by Ridley Scott, the ad symbolized Apple’s desire to “rescue” humanity from the conformity of computer industry giant IBM. It was a call for “a computer for the rest of us.”

In a market dominated by the IBM PC, most computer users were struggling to learn tricky commands and special keywords to run their software. But Mac users could just “point and click.” The Mac used a graphical user interface and a mouse—both new features on mass market computers.

The Macintosh with graphical user interface, keyboard, and mouse.

Even with its splashy introduction and its breakthroughs in usability and design, however, the Mac started slowly in the marketplace and sales were modest in the first year. Moreover, Steve Jobs’ intense personality, drive for perfection, and difficult management style frequently clashed with others at Apple, and in 1985, he suffered the same fate as many Silicon Valley founders when he was fired by the board of directors. Jobs’ departure marked the end of an era and the beginning of a ten-year period of massive hits and equally big misses for him outside of Apple.

Over the years, Apple has continued to cultivate an “outsider” image with campaigns that portray Mac users as rebels, and the Mac’s hardware and software changed many times since 1984. Apple’s way of combining elegant industrial design, brilliant marketing, and advanced engineering remain its core values, expressed in everything it makes. The company consistently ranks in first place of all global brands.

The Impact of the Mac

The celebration of the Apple Macintosh’s 40th anniversary is not merely a retrospective glance at a piece of technology; it’s a reflection on how a single innovation, introduced at the crossroads of design and functionality, has rippled through time, shaping the way we interact with and perceive computing.

CHM has curated a unique array of Apple Macintosh artifacts, both from the Museum’s collection and on loan from Apple alums. The temporary retrospective mini pop-up showcases the technological achievements, the team behind them, the cultural influences that shaped the brand, and a few more surprises.

Pop-up Highlights

The evolution of Macintosh hardware began with wire-wrap prototypes built in the early 1980s by Apple employees Dan Kottke and Brian Howard. As the design changed throughout the development process, new versions were made. Shown here is Prototype #4.

Macintosh Wire-wrap Prototype #4, Apple Computer, Inc., 1981, Gift of Andy Hertzfeld, catalog number 102638251.

Once the hardware was finalized using wire-wrap, a printed circuit board was designed by team member Colette Askeland for mass production. This board was very compact, allowing for the Mac’s highly portable “all-in-one” packaging. To make a complete Macintosh system, a screen, floppy disk, keyboard, mouse, and power supply were added.

Macintosh Main Logic Board, Apple Computer, Inc., 1984, Gift of Henri Socha, catalog number 102667053.

A marketer’s dream, Apple’s loyal customers feel a strong emotional connection with the company, transforming them from customers into promoters. Beyond regularly buying new Apple products, Apple fans have shown their affection for the Mac in many different—and sometimes oddball—ways: Mac tattoos, a “MacQuarium,” Apple logo haircuts, paper Macs, Mac-inspired music, and more. 

“What is love?,” Mac the Rapper, performed by the Apple Macintosh, Shinola Records, 1987, catalog number 102651542. You can listen to it here.

One last thing. For the very first public showing of the Macintosh, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and the leaders of the Macintosh design team came to Boston on January 30, 1984, to put on a spectacular show with 1,200 Boston Computer Society members in attendance, then the largest personal computer user organization in the country with 32,000 members in all 50 states and 57 countries.  The BCS general meeting recordings are now part of the CHM collection. To watch the first public showing of the Macintosh video see  “The Very First ‘Stevenote’.”

We hope to see you at CHM for our Apple Mac at 40 mini pop-up, closing February 25, 2024. Get your ticket now!

If you can’t make it in person, check out the online pop-up.

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Do you remember 1998? That was the year Google was founded, France won the World Cup, and Microsoft was the largest company in the world. And a furry little creature—half owl, half hamster—was the “it” gift for the holiday season. Marketed in a high-profile advertising campaign on television and mass media, Furby was a $35 digital toy that captured the imaginations of millions around the world and continues to have an active community of fans today.

Furby was a robotic “friend” that could respond to touch, light, and sound. An electric motor and a system of cams and gears closed the Furby’s eyes and mouth, raised its ears, and lifted it off the ground. Equipped with these sensors and motors, Furbys could blink, wiggle their ears, and even dance to music. They came in several different outfits and dozens of colors, but they all spoke “Furbish,” an imaginary language that slowly morphed into English as the creature interacted more with its owner.

Kids going wild for Furbys at New York’s FAO Schwartz store, 1998. Credit: UNITED STATES – OCTOBER 02: Students from PS 59 meet Furby, a new interactive toy, at FAO Schwarz. (Photo by Susan Watts/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)

The Furby Frenzy

Catapulting demand for the toys during the initial 1998 holiday season drove the resale price to well over US $100 and sometimes several times that. As supplies dwindled, arguments and fistfights broke out between rival parents at Toys R’ Us stores. When supplies ran out, consumers turned to the internet, where Furbys could be purchased for many times their retail price.

Furby also caught the attention of American intelligence agencies and the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA was concerned that the little creatures might interfere with takeoffs and landings and cause safety issues. It even issued an alert that, “Furbys should not be on when the plane is below 10,000 feet.” Because of the way Furbys reacted to light, touch and sound, and fearing that Furbys might record their surroundings (they don’t), the US National Security Agency banned the toy from its headquarters in 1999, as did the US Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, VA.

Original Furby (1998) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furby#/media/File:Furby_vert_(Tiger).jpg

But no one else seemed to be worried: During the first three years of production, over 40 million Furbys were sold. A global phenomenon, people from Birmingham to Berlin to Bombay clamored for a fuzzy little creature of their own. The hysteria continued for several years, in part because Furbys were so customizable, making it one of the hottest toys of the late ’90s and early 2000s.

Speaking Furbish

Unveiling of the new Furby toy at the UN Plaza on Aug. 2, 2005, in New York City. https://www.nydailynews.com/2023/06/27/furby-then-and-now/

In 2019, CHM’s Director of Curatorial Affairs David Brock interviewed Furby co-inventor David Hampton about his goals in creating Furby and its language abilities.

In his oral history, Hampton also relates how when customers who reported a broken Furby were told they would have to send it in to get a replacement, they often decided to keep the original instead. It was their Furby—drooping ear or broken gears and all.

Furby Forever

Like many things that change popular culture and, in turn, are changed by it, Furbys appeared in movies, TV shows, and even in the lyrics of songs. In fact, sometimes the line got blurred. Tiger Electronics (Hasbro), who made the toy, sued the Warner Brothers film studio for the Furby’s resemblance to the “Gizmo” character in their comedy-horror movie, Gremlins. (It was settled out of court).

Actress Hilary Duff unwraps a Furby during her 18th birthday party on Sept. 28, 2005, inside Club Mood in Hollywood, CA. https://www.nydailynews.com/2023/06/27/furby-then-and-now/

With the rise of the internet, online communities dedicated to Furbys sprang up rapidly, with enthusiasts sharing tips on how to care for their robotic pets and teaching each other the nuances of Furbish.

Furby’s popularity continues to this day, with thousands of passionate collectors and experts discussing Furby facts and trivia online, as well as a very active market for the toys on eBay. Furbys are a durable cultural touchstone that brought a new degree of fun and interactivity to toys. It’s simplicity and customizability remain its strengths, and with the 2023 Furby the legend lives on for new generations to enjoy.

The secret to its success? Furby creator Hampton says, “Here’s what I think: The magic act worked. . . . people added their own imagination to the toy and made it become better than what I had created. They became part of it.”

Visit the Furbys in CHM’s collection and see David Hampton’s full video oral history here.

Main image: Original Furby, 1998. https://official-furby.fandom.com/wiki/Official_Furby_Wiki

SUPPORT CHM’S MISSION

The care and feeding of our Furbys and other artifacts of the computing revolution would not be possible without the generous support of people like you who care deeply about decoding technology. Please consider making a donation.

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Last spring, on the occasion of its 25th anniversary, VMware reached out to the Computer History Museum with a proposal to create the VMware Founders Collection. The resulting collaboration preserves the history of one of Silicon Valley’s most innovative and successful companies. I’m the archivist tasked with building it from scratch.

The VM in VMware stands for “virtual machine.” When presented with this assignment, I was a bit stumped. What artifacts can we collect for a company whose product is virtual?

Solving Hard Problems

VMware’s history is one of the most compelling Silicon Valley stories I’ve ever heard. It begins with smart people trying to solve difficult problems. In the late 1990s, one of those problems was that computers could only run one operating system. In some cases, individual business applications took up an entire machine, while utilizing less than 20% of the machine’s capability. The x86 virtualization program developed by VMware’s founding technologists Mendel Rosenblum, Scott Devine, Ellen Wang, and Edouard Bugnion, enabled a single machine to be segmented into several virtual machines, each with its own operating system.

Once virtualized, computers could handle multiple functions safely and securely. The savings in hardware, space, electricity, and human resources were incredible.

The front cover of VMware Ready to Run Virtual Machine software CDs with a photograph of company founders, 2000. Catalog number 102801286.

Virtualize Everything

Thus was VMware’s vision born: to “virtualize everything.” It was a pretty easy sell to enterprises in the early 2000s. In just a few years, VMware had succeeded in virtualizing individual computers and turned its attention to virtualizing networks, another formidable challenge. Under the leadership of CEO Diane Greene, VMware built its smart team into a company with some of the best engineers in the business. Over the course of several years, VMware’s innovators developed effective and reliable ways to virtualize all kinds of networks.

Installation discs for VMware vSphere 4 and 1 installation disc for Cisco Nexus 1000V Virtual Ethernet Module for VMware vSphere 4 from 2009. Catalog number 102801283.

Virtualization at many levels and in many different areas of computing has enabled the IT revolution in which we are currently living. It is, in fact, the very basis of cloud computing.

But still, as an archivist, I had to ask, “What are the things we can collect? What can we put in our museum to tell this story?”

The Real (Hi)Story

Most long-lived companies develop a very strong corporate culture that’s reflected in the material culture they produce, like marketing collateral, T-shirts, awards, etc. (SWAG, anyone?) We collect these things because they encapsulate the spirit of the company and the uniqueness of the innovation environment.

For VMware, the spirit of innovation is found in the form of a block. The earliest concept of the virtual machine was as a hardware block (a CPU) divided into virtual blocks (virtual machines). Employees receive glass blocks for their 4th, 8th, and 12th anniversaries. We’ve collected these, along with boxes and discs of VMware’s early products.

Glass cubes awarded to employees on their 4th anniversary with VMware. Catalog number 102801292.

VMware’s creative and passionate spirit can be found in T-shirts featuring cheeky taglines and images; digital materials documenting VMware employee activities; and a crew of turtles who call the pond in VMware’s Palo Alto campus their home. We aren’t collecting the turtles, of course, but we will hold on to Rosie’s Turtle Tales, a book chronicling their adventures, along with representative sample of VMware SWAG.

Hardback book titled Rosie’s Turtle Tales, by Cathy Luo, illustrated by Chelsea Wilson, 2019. Catalog number 102801296.

T-shirt designed by VMware with a graphic design showing network components and that reads “Liberation Through Virtualization.” Catalog number 102801297.

All of these things are fun and interesting, but they only tell part of the story. The real manifestation of the culture is in the people who have made VMware’s history through their work. We must collect their memories too.

I’ve had the privilege to interview 21 current and former VMware employees from all areas of the company and all regions of the world. I’ve learned a lot about VMware’s groundbreaking innovations, their worldwide impact, and the culture that made it all possible.

The author with Ganesh Venkitachalam, VP of Engineering & Product Management, Cloud Storage and Data Protection, VMware for his interview on September 12, 2023.

On Innovation

On Strong Leadership and Strong Core Values

On Lasting Impact

We invite you to explore the VMware Founders Collection here, including my interviews with VMware employees. More material will be added in the coming months. And CHM curators will be conducting full-length oral history interviews with some of VMware’s most important contributors.

It has been a real pleasure for me to get to know VMware—its technologies, its culture, and most of all its people around the globe. I would like to thank Amy Plunkett, Director—Global Communications, for being my guide and partner in building the VMware Founders Collection.

See more VMware artifacts in the VMware Founders Collection. If you have materials (or memories) related to VMware, please reach out to us at vmware-history@computerhistory.org.

Main image: VMware book titled “Who We Are, 2013/2014.” Catalog number 102801295.

SUPPORT CHM’S MISSION

Preserving collections like these would not be possible without the generous support of people like you who care deeply about computing history. Please consider making a donation.

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ERMA was the absolute beginning of the mechanization of business.

— Thomas Morrin, SRI Director of Engineering

On May 17, the Computer History Museum received a very special artifact for its permanent collection. This object, a highly-specialized computer system, rescued Bank of America—indeed the entire American banking industry—from being buried under an avalanche of paper and marked the earliest large-scale use of computers in business. The machine was called ERMA: the Electronic Recording Machine, Accounting, and the system came from the Bank of America building in Concord, California, where it had proudly been on display for several decades.

ERMA display at Bank of America’s Concord campus. Only the major parts of ERMA were preserved. Photo by Aurora Tucker.

Recently arrived ERMA units at CHM’s environmentally controlled storage facility. Photo by Aurora Tucker.

ERMA’s Story

Before the mid-twentieth century, banking was a time-consuming, manual process. Deposits and withdrawals were recorded by hand, and account balances were calculated using mechanical adding machines. An experienced bookkeeper could post 245 bank accounts in an hour—about 2,000 in an eight-hour workday, or approximately 10,000 per week. (Even today, despite new payment systems like Venmo and Paypal, the average American writes 38 checks per year.) The system was prone to errors, and transactions could take days to process. And, because communication and record-keeping were largely done on paper, banks were limited in their ability to serve any but local customers.

Amy Weaver Fisher and James L. McKenney, “The Development of the ERMA Banking System: Lessons From History,” IEEE Annals of the Historv of Computing, Vol 15, no. 1, (1993): 45.

After WW II, a booming middle class placed huge demands on American banks. At Bank of America (BofA), checking accounts were growing at a rate of 23,000 per month and branches had to close every day at 2 or 3:00 p.m. to handle the paperwork for that day. Even as early as 1948, the bank was processing over two billion checks per year.

ERMA was designed and built in mid-century. Note the atomic and “space-age” themes. https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2023/04/102726943-05-01-acc.pdf

Bank of America, called Bank of Italy until 1930, was founded in 1904 by A.P. Giannini as a small neighborhood bank in San Francisco’s North Beach district. The bank‘s philosophy was to provide banking services to those not traditionally served by local banks, like immigrants and new small business owners. The bank’s success was phenomenal. By the end of 1941, Bank of America boasted 495 branches and $2.1 billion in assets. During World War II, California’s population and economy mushroomed, boosting Bank of America’s resources to more than $5 billion, more than any commercial bank in the world.

Preparing ERMA’s sorter for transport while A.P. Giannini looks on. Photo by Aurora Tucker.

Given this growth, and the expected growth in bank accounts after the War, BofA Vice President S. Clark Beise went to business machine companies like IBM and Burroughs to see if they could design a solution. But, these companies were not interested. Beise then approached the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in Menlo Park, California, about applying automated methods to the problem, and they agreed to explore possible solutions. The proposed system was called ERMA and took some seven years of development to complete.

Led by SRI’s director of engineering, Thomas H. Morrin, ERMA’s development was a complex undertaking that involved multiple teams and disciplines. On the BofA side, Al Zipf headed the equipment research department and coordinated development of important subsystems, including MICR. At its core, ERMA was a combination of hardware and software that automated banking operations. The hardware included a magnetic ink character recognition (MICR) system that could read information encoded on checks, a high-speed printer and sorter for check processing, and a computer to process transactions.

ERMA’s high-speed sorter. Built by GE in partnership with National and Pitney-Bowes. Photo by Aurora Tucker.

A major challenge was developing the software to process transactions. The team had to design a system that could handle millions of transactions per day, while ensuring that account balances were accurate and up-to-date. They accomplished this by using a combination of processing methods. Batch processing was used to process transactions in large groups, while real-time processing was used for high-priority transactions, such as those involving large sums of money. Interestingly, future AI pioneer Joseph Weizenbaum was on the ERMA software team, just a few years prior to writing his famous (and controversial) ELIZA chatbot program.

ERMA tape drives. Originally made by Potter Instruments. Photo by Aurora Tucker.

Though development was ongoing, the first ERMA prototype was ready by 1952, and by 1955, the design was established. SRI and BofA then looked for a vendor to build multiple ERMA systems (there would be 33 in total), and GE won the contract. Re-implemented using transistors by the newly formed General Electric Computer Department, ERMA was officially launched in 1959, after seven years of development. (The vacuum tube prototype was quietly donated to the engineering school of Arizona State University). Over the next two years, an additional 32 systems were installed, and by 1966, 12 regional ERMA centers served all but 21 of Bank of America’s 900 branches. Handling more than 750 million checks a year, the new ERMA was an immediate success. Within just a couple of years, it had shown the entire banking industry a new way of doing business.

ERMA was introduced to the world in September 1955 by future American president Ronald Reagan.

The SRI ERMA Development Team, c. 1950s. https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2023/04/102783425-05-01-acc.pdf

By 1961, ERMA was handling 2.3 million accounts. The system was eventually able to read ten checks a second, with errors on the order of 1 per 100,000 checks. ERMA contained more than a million feet of wiring, 5 input consoles with MICR readers, 2 magnetic memory drums, the check sorter, a high-speed printer, a power control panel, a maintenance board, 24 racks holding 1,500 electrical packages and 500 relay packages, and 12 magnetic tape drives for 2,400-foot tape reels.

ERMA’s Impact

ERMA sped up processing by 80%, handling 33,000 accounts in the time it would take a human teller to process 250—and did it without error. The system relied on a clever encoding system: by writing the three important numbers required to process a check (bank routing number, the customer’s account number, and the check number) using a special magnetic ink at the bottom of every check, ERMA could instantly get the relevant information for the transaction. Magnetic ink was chosen to provide resistance against smudging or wrinkling of the check, and the system—called Magnetic Ink Character Recognition—was quickly adopted by the American Banking Association as a standard. Soon all banks were using the MICR system invented for ERMA. Take a look at one of your checks today: the MICR characters are still there.

Modern check showing MICR characters at bottom.

In the 1970s, BofA offered a credit card linked to customer checking accounts, another first and so ERMA was also a precursor to modern electronic banking and credit card systems. More generally, ERMA demonstrated the potential of electronic data processing for banking transactions, got GE into the computer business, and was one of the earliest successful large-scale application of computers to business anywhere. Given that at the time the project started, electronic digital stored-program computers were less than five years old, ERMA was incredibly ambitious.

Today, electronic banking is a ubiquitous part of our lives—we can even use our smartphones to transfer money, pay bills, and check our account balances. When we take photos of our checks for mobile deposit, our smartphones read the MICR characters. ERMA’s legacy is still with us.

Main image: ERMA graphic from Bank of America publicity brochure, https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2023/04/102726943-05-01-acc.pdf

Learn more about ERMA

1. A Survey of Digital Computers, Ballistic Research Laboratory, 1961, GE 100 ERMA, p. 263 ff.

2. Interview with Dr. Robert Johnson, Manager, GE Computer Department, Annals of the History of Computing, vol 12, no. 2, 1990, pp.130-137.

3. SRI Alumni Hall of Fame: https://srialumni.org/halloffame-archive.html

4. Woodbury, David, O., Let ERMA Do it: The Full Story of Automation, New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1956.

5. Fisher, A. W., and McKenney, J. L., “The development of the ERMA banking systems: lessons from history,” Annals of the History of Computing, vol. 15, no. 1, 1993, pp. 44-57.

6. Head, R.V., “ERMA’s lost battalion,” Annals of the History of Computing, vol. 23, no. 3, pp. 64-72.

7. 1955 SRI newsletter, Research for Industry: http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/SRI_Newsletter_Oct55-1.pdf

8. GE Computer, GE 210 ERMA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfHMu75cfjg

9. Kim, H. Hannah, ERMA’s Whiz Kids: https://increment.com/teams/ermas-whiz-kids/

The post ERMA Can Do It! appeared first on CHM.

We use software as an engine to power and move our digital world. We create software from code, that is, special languages that we can read and write, and that determine what computers and digital technologies actually do. Writing code is an art, a creative human activity undertaken by both individuals and by teams, and by using sophisticated tools. The code that people create can be art in another sense also: For those who are familiar with these special languages, they can see beauty within it, much as we all can appreciate the design of a stunning garden or public park.

The Computer History Museum invites you to accompany us for a year-long tour through this Art of Code, with many opportunities to explore remarkable stories, events, and historical source code releases. We will hear from experts and luminaries about how software is created and the important consequences it has for society. We will have a chance to explore, firsthand, the source code behind major developments in computing. And we will have a chance to engage in discussions about critical issues today and their relationship to code.

Here’s a sample of the “Art of Code” you can find at CHM.

A cassette containing the source code for Apple II DOS. In 2013, CHM released the code.

A set of floppy disks for MS-DOS 2.0. In 2014, CHM released the source code for Microsoft’s MS-DOS 1.1 and 2.0.

In 2017, CHM opened Make Software, Change the World! a 6,000 square foot exhibition that explores how the lives of people everywhere have been transformed by software.

What’s In Store

To preview for you just some of the coming year’s offerings for the Art of Code, we marked the 50th anniversary of the breakthrough software language and environment, Smalltalk, in September 2022. Smalltalk embraced a fresh, modular, and dynamic approach to the art of code called object-oriented programming. It was also a major step in the use of computers by children. The reverberations of each are still felt today. You can watch the full program here and read a blog recap here.

In October 2022, we celebrated this year’s new CHM Fellows who all have made remarkable contributions to the art of code, from Smalltalk to the pathbreaking Plato system of online communities, learning, and collaboration, and also to the development of the internet itself. Watch the full program here and read a blog recap here.

Available both for the IBM PC and the Apple Macintosh, in its heyday Eudora had tens of millions of users. In 2018, CHM released the Eudora email client source code.

Ken Thompson (seated) and Dennis Ritchie (standing) with the DEC PDP-11 to which they migrated the UNIX effort in 1971. In 2019, CHM released the source code for the earliest version of UNIX. Credit: Collection of the Computer History Museum, 10268544.

Source Code Releases

For programmers, developers, coders, and other students of code, we will begin a remarkable series of historical source code releases over the year. We will begin with the public release of the source code for PostScript, the innovative software behind printing as we know it, the rise of Adobe, and PDF. Closely following will be CHM’s public release of the source code for the Apple Lisa computer, a remarkably influential project by Apple that did so much to bring the graphical user interface and “What You See is What You Get” approaches into personal computing. It is still our primary way of interacting with digital technology forty years later.

Children animating horses in Smalltalk-72 on an Alto computer. In 2020, CHM began hosting the Smalltalk Zoo, a collection of historical versions of Smalltalk from 1972 to 1995 in an in-browser emulation. Credit: Courtesy of the PARC Library. © PARC. CHM Object ID 500004466

Later in the year, look for a events and offerings marking the 50th anniversaries of some of the pathbreaking developments in networked personal computing at Xerox PARC: The revolutionary Xerox Alto system and the era-defining network technology of Ethernet. CHM will also be releasing a digital archive of PARC’s extraordinary historical contributions, including source code, documents, images, and more. Sign up for our mailing list to stay informed.

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Please join us for this Art of Code journey by signing up here for news and updates and begin your own journey through our existing Art of Code resources by watching this movie, exploring this playlist of CHM’s historical source code releases, by visiting Make Software and Revolution online. Learn more about the Art of Code at CHM.

Main image credit: Early MacPaint drawing by Susan Kare. In 2010, CHM released the MacPaint and Quickdraw source code. Credit: Apple, Inc.

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For five summer days in 1976, the first generation of computer rock stars had its own Woodstock. Coming from around the world, dozens of computing’s top engineers, scientists, and software pioneers got together to reflect upon the first 25 years of their discipline in the warm, sunny (and perhaps a bit unsettling) climes of the Los Alamos National Laboratories, birthplace of the atomic bomb.

After a multi-year recovery and restoration process, the Computer History Museum is delighted to announce it is making available 21 never-before-seen video recordings of this unique conference. You can watch them here.

See the photo in its original size in a PDF here. Los Alamos Conference Attendees, Los Alamos, NM, 1976. https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102695546

Legend for the Los Alamos Conference photo above, 1976.

List for the Los Alamos Conference Legend, 1976.

Continuation of the list for the Los Alamos Conference Legend, 1976.

In its early years (1950s and ‘60s), computing was a field wide open for exploration. Since so much was new, innovators building computers in this period of early discovery often invented things of permanent, lasting value to computing—either in hardware or software. Engineer Bob Everett’s remarks on the legendary MIT Whirlwind computer describes MIT’s 1952 perfection of magnetic core memory—thereby solving the single biggest bottleneck facing early computer designers. (Before magnetic core memory, there was no reliable, electronic, digital, random-access memory for building computers with, retarding any further progress until solved).

Conference speakers remembered these innovations, still in recent memory, leaving behind a one-of-a-kind record of why these early pioneers did what they did and why. Many of the machines in this first generation—17 of them were based upon the Institute for Advanced Study parallel binary architecture—were discussed at the conference: ENIAC, EDVAC, SEAC, SWAC, MANIAC, and ORACLE, among others. The remarkable thing these systems had in common was that they were essentially hand-built. The title of “programmer,” “systems analyst,” or other formal and now-familiar job titles did not exist: these machines were built by engineers, technicians, mechanics, and scientists for whom their often-finicky nature could be justified by the advanced calculations they performed. And nearly all of these early machines were “number crunchers”—designed for computation and solving advanced scientific and engineering problems. Setting the conference in Los Alamos was thus appropriate in a way, given the vast number of computations required in fulfilling the Labs’ wartime and later national security mission. Today, some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world are at the Labs.

Typical of computers of this generation, the 1946 ENIAC, the earliest American large-scale electronic computer, had to be left powered up 24 hours a day to keep its 18,000 vacuum tubes healthy. Turning them on and off, like a light bulb, shortened their life dramatically. ENIAC co-inventor John Mauchly discusses this serious issue.

Every concert has its high point… when Jimi Hendrix sets his guitar on fire or Pete Townshend shoves his guitar into a waiting amplifier. The Los Alamos peak moment was the brilliant lecture on the British WW II Colossus computing engines by computer scientist and historian of computing Brian Randell. Colossus machines were special-purpose computers used to decipher messages of the German High Command in WW II.

Based in southern England at Bletchley Park, these giant codebreaking machines regularly provided life-saving intelligence to the allies. Their existence was a closely-held secret during the war and for decades after. Randell’s lecture was—excuse me—a bombshell, one which prompted an immediate re-assessment of the entire history of computing. Observes conference attendee (and inventor of ASCII) IBM’s Bob Bemer, “On stage came Prof. Brian Randell, asking if anyone had ever wondered what Alan Turing had done during World War II? From there he went on to tell the story of Colossus—that day at Los Alamos was close to the first time the British Official Secrets Act had permitted any disclosures. I have heard the expression many times about jaws dropping, but I had really never seen it happen before.”

Publishing these original primary sources for the first time is part of CHM’s mission to not only preserve computing history but to make it come alive. We hope you will enjoy seeing and hearing from these early pioneers of computing. Leave us a comment below. We’d love to hear from you.

See all the videos on this playlist.

Dig Deeper

1. Williams, M.R., “The First Public Discussion of the Colossus Project,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Volume: 40, Issue 1, Jan.–Mar. 2018
   https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8356174
2. B. Randell, “The Colossus”, in A History of Computing in the Twentieth Century (N. Metropolis, J. Howlett and G. C. Rota, Eds.), pp.47–92, Academic Press, New York, 1980.
3. International Research Conference on the History of Computing [Review], Los Alamos, June 10-15, 1976, John G. Brainerd, Technology and Culture, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Apr., 1977), pp. 218-221: Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

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Margaret Hamilton is literally iconic. She is also intensely private, having never given a full-length interview about her life and career. That is, until now. That Margaret Hamilton was deservedly renowned for her achievements in computing is clear: In 2016, President Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and in 2017 she became a Fellow of the Computer History Museum.

That the software pioneer had moved from distinguished to iconic truly struck home for me in December, when I walked into the Smithsonian’s beautiful Arts and Industries building to see its newest exhibit, “FUTURES.” In this expansive exploration about imagining different futures for ourselves, now and in the past, one of the very first things a visitor encounters is a display about Margaret Hamilton and her remarkable contributions to the software of the Apollo Guidance Computer, which brought American astronauts safely back and forth to the surface of the Moon.

Margaret Hamilton as an icon for software and space achievement in the Smithsonian’s “FUTURES” exhibit, photographed in 2021. Photos by David C. Brock.

The photograph of her standing beside a tower of printouts of Apollo Guidance Computer source code has itself become an iconic image, widely used to illustrate many discussions of the history of women in computing. It is but a click away in the Wikimedia Commons for authors, photo editors, students, and exhibit designers alike.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Margaret_Hamilton_-_restoration.jpg#/media/File:Margaret_Hamilton.gif

This photograph and Hamilton’s persona as a symbol of technical achievement blend together in the iconography of a recent Lego toy set, “Women of NASA,” in which Hamilton was one of four featured figures.

A screenshot from the Lego website, March 2022.

The Computer History Museum has also played on Hamilton’s iconic status, incorporating her as an avatar guide in the Museum’s new Minecraft: Education Edition world, The Great Tech Story, drawing players into experiences about software.

A Remarkable Life

The roots of this iconography reach down into the remarkable history of Hamilton’s engagement with software starting in the 1950s. Her first exposure to programming came at MIT, where she programmed meteorological simulations for Professor Edward Lorenz, one of the foremost figures in the development of chaos theory. It is Lorenz who popularized the notion of the “butterfly effect,” the concept that a small difference can yield a huge change within certain systems, like the flap of a seagull’s wing causing a storm, or the flutter of a butterfly’s wing determining the path of a tornado.

From there, she became a contributor to the SAGE system at the Lincoln Laboratory, working on software to distinguish the radar signature of aircraft from electronic noise. It was a matter central to the US military’s Cold War effort. From SAGE, she joined the effort at MIT to build the software for the Apollo Guidance Computer. This software would eventually prove central to the astonishing success of the Apollo program and achieving the goal of landing a human on the Moon.

During her work on Apollo, Hamilton became highly attuned to issues of error and reliability in the Apollo Guidance Computer software. She and colleagues did a careful study of the software errors that had arisen, scrutinizing and categorizing them according to cause. Avoiding these errors by circumnavigating their causes became the focus of her career forever after. She founded two companies to pursue this work, leading the development of new formal methods and languages for creating error-free and reliable software and systems. She continues this work at the time of this writing.

The Oral History

Behind all this accomplishment and iconography stands a very real, and very private person. For someone who has devoted her professional life to avoiding error and building reliability, it would seem that the ambiguities of history, memory, and expression are not entirely comfortable. She rarely gives interviews or speaks publicly about herself. Or perhaps it is simply the fact that whatever she says, people will be listening closely. In any event, the Computer History Museum had the rare opportunity to record a lengthy oral history interview with Margaret Hamilton in connection with her 2017 CHM Fellows award. After careful review and annotation, the transcript and video of this oral history are now available online.

Below is a series of short selections from this oral history, highlights of Margaret Hamilton telling her remarkable story in her own words.

Math and Baseball

Abstract Thinking

Something Interesting

Earning It

A Smaller School

Crunching Numbers

Cucumber Sandwiches

“You Do It”

Poking Holes

Catching Hackers

Because You’re a Girl

The Seashore Program

Intrigued by Apollo

ForgetIt

Programming Priorities

Learning From Secretaries

Even Astronauts Make Mistakes

Emergency Landing

Control Theory

Somersault Lessons

We Have a Problem

Margaret Hamilton’s full oral history (see the transcript or the video) is part of the Computer History Museum’s Oral History Collection, an invaluable open resource of over 1,000 remarkable stories. To learn more about it, and to begin your own explorations, visit the collection.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Margaret Hamilton for her generosity of time and concern for this oral history, and to CHM’s Heidi Hackford and Max Plutte for their efforts on this blog post.

Support CHM’s Mission

Blogs like these would not be possible without the generous support of people like you who care deeply about decoding technology. Please consider making a donation.

Main Image Caption: Margaret Hamilton, delivering her acceptance speech for her 2017 CHM Fellows award.

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