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Computer History Museum Announces Signature Exhibit Spanning – The First 2000 Years of Computing in Early 2011

Mountain View, Ca – The Computer History Museum (CHM), the world’s leading institution exploring the history of computing and its ongoing impact on society, is going to start a “Revolution” in January 2011. The Museum formally announced today the plans for its new signature exhibition, “Revolution: The First 2000 Years of Computing.” The exhibition will be the world’s most comprehensive physical and online exploration of computing history, spanning everything from the abacus and slide rules to robots, Pong, the Internet, and beyond. Presented in a fresh, fascinating way, the $19 million expansion will appeal to a wide range of visitors including families, tech enthusiasts, gamers, and anyone else interested in learning how computing came to be and has shaped the way we live today.

In addition to expanding CHM’s physical exhibit space by 50 percent, “Revolution” will be an on-site and online experience. The web exhibit will showcase an expansive collection of one-of-a-kind artifacts, engaging stories, never seen before interviews with pioneers and dozens of videos produced exclusively for this exhibition. Currently under construction, “Revolution” is a 25,000-square foot wonderland of more than 1,000 artifacts alongside the people and stories that illustrate the social impact of computing. It includes 18 originally produced mini-movies and more than 40 oral histories on interactive personal viewing stations. Visitors will engage in a variety of sensory experiences, from picking up a 24-lb Osborne computer and playing vintage computer games like Pong, Spacewar!, Adventure and Pac-man to surfing the Web in the 1990’s. “We are delighted to bring to life the world’s premier historical exhibition on the Information Age,” said John Hollar, President and Chief Executive Officer of CHM. “Revolution represents nearly a decade of work by hundreds of people in consultation with our professional staff. The result is an accessible, multi-layered approach to storytelling that suits a variety of learning styles, both on site and online. People of all computing generations will be engaged in unexpected ways when they see how the devices and software they used over the years, and use today, originally came to be.” CHM’s curatorial staff, working with historians and experts throughout the world, hand-picked materials for “Revolution” from the Museum’s vast collection of more than 100,000 artifacts and 5,000 linear feet of archived documentation to illustrate the most complete picture possible of computing. The compelling display of technological icons selected for “Revolution” includes the Abacus, Hollerith Tabulator, Nordsieck Differential Analyzer, ENIAC, UNIVAC, SAGE, IBM System/360, IBM RAMAC disk drive, Cray-1, PDP-8, Moore’s Law, Shakey the Robot, Xerox Alto, Utah Teapot, Pong Prototype, Apple II, IBM PC, Palm Pilot, Google Server Engine and more. “Revolution” is broadly funded by a large community of supporters. The exhibition is made possible through the generosity of William H. Gates III, who gave the establishing gift for Revolution. Major funding has been provided by more than 75 donors to the Museum’s long-term capital campaign.

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