We just left the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. I was quite impressed at how much variety there was to their collection, and the woman behind the counter informed me that 2/3 of the building was used for storing things not on display, plus there’s an off-site warehouse.

The 3pm tour was hosted by Herb, who didn’t just rattle off stats on bits and bytes, he knew the stories behind many of the machines on display. While I loved being able to stand inches away (but not touch) history-making machines like SAGE and an original “Internet Message Processor” (router), the stories are really what I’m interested in these days.

This is the kind of place I could spend days at. I guess that means we’ll have to come back. That same woman told us they were opening up more exhibit space in 2009, so there’ll be even more to check out.

Yes, there were two Commodore 64s, a Plus/4, and a C16 on display. And, yes, it made me feel old to see them there. But there were former IBM 360 operators on our tour, so I can only imagine how they felt.