Computer history, seriously: Portola Valley couple honors computers and the movers and shakers who designed and built them Computer history, seriously: Portola Valley couple honors computers and the movers and shakers who designed and built them (January 11, 2006)

By David Boyce

Almanac Staff Writer

Tools are a means to an end and aren't generally given much attention in the grand scheme of things. History has little noted nor long remembered the evolution of the hammer or the development of the socket wrench.

But not all tools are created equal. Some are complex and varied and not so easily overlooked. Portola Valley couple Len Shustek and Donna Dubinsky are dedicated to ensuring a bright future for a Silicon Valley institution that chronicles the history of a particularly complex, influential and familiar tool: the computer.

"The computer represents a very important intellectual accomplishment of human beings," says Mr. Shustek, who chairs the board of trustees of the nonprofit Computer History Museum in Mountain View.

"It amplifies the human brain," he adds. "It is fundamentally changing human understanding. ... I think this (museum) is extremely important. We remain, to this day, the only large-scale computer-collection museum in the world."
Honoring the devices

A principal objective of the museum is to recognize the impact of computing devices on society and technology. The collection includes some 8,500 pieces of hardware and industry ephemera such as trade show buttons and advertising, 1,000 pieces of software, 2,500 documents and thousands of moving and still images.

Such items need shelter. With the 2002 purchase of Silicon Graphics' former marketing headquarters at 1401 North Shoreline Blvd., museum officials aim to fill the empty spaces of the two-story, 119,000 square-foot building with permanent and rotating exhibits.

The vast majority of the collection is stored away, but the current display on the first floor is noteworthy. Visitors can take a guided tour of some 500 hardware artifacts, some large and highly complex, some small and simple. Many are industry landmarks.

The first Google server is there, as is the computer that inspired Stanley Kubrick's depiction of the astronaut removing memory from the rogue computer in the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey."

Kids may get a kick out of the hands-on aspects of exhibits on the histories of computer chess and of notable Silicon Valley people and companies.

A permanent industry-timeline exhibit is planned; rotating exhibits will include software, networking, computer architecture, and perhaps industry advertising and embedded computers, such as are used in vehicles.

Online visitors to the museum can search the collection, peruse a well-illustrated industry timeline, and study histories of the microprocessor, the Internet and computer chess.

The museum has a staff of 32, but volunteers play a big role. A group of about 20 former IBM engineers are restoring an 1960s-era IBM 1401 mainframe. "The last time we saw one of these was in a branch office in the 1960s and 1970s," recalls former IBM customer engineer Don Cull.

In an unlit room sits a pristine circa-1959 Model 1620 IBM mainframe that reportedly runs. Over two years, six engineers spent their weekends restoring it, including appending modern circuitry when the old was missing or broken, says David Laws, a Portola Valley resident and volunteer.

The museum has hosted vintage computer swap meets and co-sponsored film presentations in San Jose, including "Desk Set," a 1957 comic jab at artificial intelligence starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy.

In the future, the museum may prepare high school curriculum materials on the computer, the Internet and the Web, says Mr. Shustek.
Honoring the people

The museum's online list of 33 fellows includes several Silicon Valley luminaries: Apple Computer co-founder Steve Wozniak; Woodside resident Gordon Moore, who co-founded Intel and Fairchild Semiconductor; and Adobe Acrobat co-creators John Warnock and Charles Geschke.

Mr. Shustek, 57, and Ms. Dubinsky, 50, say they hope to transform the annual fellowship awards into a "Nobel prize" of computing in recognition of a "very, very high impact" on technology and society.

The museum is wasting no time in collecting oral histories on the industry's leaders, technologies and companies, says Mr. Shustek. "Here, we're designing a history museum when so many of the protagonists are still alive. That's the opportunity we have."

"It's a shame that, in our society, ... what we hold up to (children) as heroes are sports figures and actors," says Ms. Dubinsky, a former CEO of Palm Computing, co-founder of Handspring and the current CEO of Menlo Park-based Numenta, who has a bachelor's degree in history from Yale University and a master's degree in business from Harvard University.

"We'd like to take technologists and make them heroes," says Mr. Shustek, who co-founded Nestar Systems and Network General Corp., is a partner in the venture firm VenCraft and a consulting professor at Stanford University, and has bachelor's and master's degrees in physics from Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, and a master's degree and a doctorate in computer science from Stanford.

The museum's speaker series, according to the Web site, is meant to enliven computing history with "inside stories and personal insights" and to encourage "open, passionate discussions" on the computer's impact.
Raising money

Institutions need money to grow. Ms. Dubinsky is helping to lead a campaign to raise $125 million: a $50 million endowment and a $75 million fund for exhibits and capital expenses.

The campaign has raised about $72 million so far, she says, which includes a $15 million pledge made in October 2005 by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The museum has been lucky. Seed money wasn't hard to find during the dot-com boom, says Mr. Shustek. After the boom went bust, the museum acquired its property and building at a discount. Now, with fundraising having begun in earnest, a propitious "feeling of well-being" has taken hold in Silicon Valley, he says.
Not so hands-on

The museum does not feature hands-on experiences on the model of San Francisco's Exploratorium or San Jose's Tech Museum of Innovation. Young children and fun-seekers may be a little disappointed. Docents wear white gloves when touching an artifact and visitors are explicitly asked not to touch things.

The intended audience is people from "inside the computer industry," other interested adults, and students with more than a passing interest in computing, says Mr. Shustek.

Students can be a tough crowd. An hour-long docent-led tour got a mixed review from Justin Haley, an eighth-grader from San Ramon there with his grandmother and younger siblings. "I was just waiting for it to be over," he says. "I wasn't really paying attention to what he was saying."

When pressed, he revealed that he hadn't tuned out completely. "It was kind of interesting to see how much technology has advanced in just 20 years, or even 10 years," he says. "I guess most people, like, take for granted the way computers are."

Santa Clara resident and industry insider James Hayward says he appreciates seeing Silicon Valley's role in computing history. His overall impression: "To a large extent, what we're doing (in the industry) is making smaller versions of the giant hardware monsters in here."
Tangible and intangible

In the walk-through collection, 19th and 20th century slide rules share space with World War II and post-war devices. The Enigma, the legendary Nazi encryption machine, rests next to a fragment from Colossus, the Allied forces' computer that decoded Enigma's messages.

The first Apple computer, co-designed by Steve Wozniak, sits in a wooden box bearing his signature. It is one artifact that has reportedly appreciated in value from its original price of $666. It may be worth $10,000 today, says volunteer David Laws.

The steady shrinking of devices is an obvious lesson. A 1970s-era hard disk drive as big around as a truck tire held 10 megabytes; the latest iPod fits in your pocket and holds 60 gigabytes -- 6,000 times more data.

In the supercomputer collection, each device has a back story on inventive ways, using freon and even liquid nitrogen, to remove heat from the very high-speed circuits.

The museum's collection is largely complete, says Mr. Shustek. The Web site has a wish list, but only items that are "important, successful and first in their category" are on it, he says.

Along with thousands of tangible objects, images, recordings, and documents, the collection includes gigabytes of software meant for older machines. What can be done with that?

"That's a really difficult problem that we're just beginning to grapple with," says Mr. Shustek, noting that the industry's rapid progress has often left old software without compatible machines to run on.

The plan is to ask volunteers from a "very active software collection group" to create emulator programs, an old industry trick that fools modern computers into running programs meant for older systems. "The bits we're recovering may not (otherwise) be accessible to future generations," he says.
Reservoir of mistakes

One "fascinating" and "inspirational" part of computer history are industry failures, he says. He readily acknowledges feelings of shame over unnecessarily complicated "PC-like" computers that "really challenge even the most technical people to keep running."

The Internet, by contrast, is a great interface, says Ms. Dubinsky, no stranger to design issues in her leading roles at Palm and Handspring. "It's one reason the Internet grew so fast," she says. "It works."

Good technology is just one part of a good product, says Mr. Shustek. At the museum, computer professionals may learn from poorly designed interfaces that cost the industry "billions of dollars" in lost opportunities, he adds.
On giants' shoulders?

"The computer is really the most significant communal invention in history," says Ms. Dubinsky.

Learning from others does seem to imbue the collection. A docent-led tour reveals that, while experiments and one-of-a-kind machines dotted the landscape up to the mid 20th century, the post-war years launched a wave of collaboration among scientists and inventors that continues to this day.

Three breakthroughs made the difference: the miniaturizing and heat conserving effects of transistors, the invention of "persistent" memory (not affected by power losses), and an easier way to "talk" to computers using programming languages based on words and math formulas instead of tedious symbols.

Collaboration can come from unexpected quarters, says Mr. Shustek. The World Wide Web, he points out, was invented by Tim Berners-Lee, a Brit doing high-energy physics research at the time. The museum named him a fellow in 2003.

Asked what the next big things in the industry might be, Ms. Dubinsky replies: "If we knew what they were, we'd do them ourselves."
INFORMATION

The Computer History Museum is located in Mountain View at 1401 North Shoreline Blvd., next to the Shoreline Boulevard exit on U.S. 101. Hours are 1 to 4 p.m. Wednesday and Friday, and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday. Docent-led tours are available; comfortable shoes are recommended. The museum is wheelchair accessible. Donations, membership and volunteering are encouraged. For more information, call 810-1038 or go to computerhistory.org. On Wednesday, January 11, four founders of Sun Microsystems will have a panel discussion at the museum from 6:30 to 8 p.m. A $10 donation is suggested for non-members.
ONLINE SEARCH

The online museum at computerhistory.org has well-illustrated features on people and events in the industry in a timeline from 1945 to 1990, with separate histories of the microprocessor, the Internet and computer chess.
Users can search the museum's collection of some 8,400 entries. Among the ephemera are photographs of trade show buttons and even an Intel belt buckle. Pocket protectors are conspicuously absent.

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