Washington D.C. Trip

Didn't get anything from anywhere on my extended Memorial Day vacation to Washington D.C. (Mostly running through museums) But I highly reccomend it to anyone interested in historical computing devices. The main Smithsonian museums I went to were the American History Museum and the Air and Space museum. Both had special exhibits on information processing, and among the highlights are: American History Museum "The History of Information Processing" - An old mechanical logarithm calculator the size of a prone refrigerator - Two original German Enigma machines, the three-rotor and four-rotor models. These were AWESOME, and all the true hax0rs stood around them in awe. - The accumulators, main control pannel, power supplies and I/O tube grid from the Eniac. - A UNIVAC control unit. - The MANIAC main processor unit (HUGE box) - A Bendix mainframe, tape drive, and typewriter terminal - An old tube-based IBM mainframe with drum hard drive - An IBM/360 control unit. - A DEC PDP/8 with transparent card cage - A DEC PDP/15, the first computer used for fingerprint analysis by the FBI - A Xerox Altos, the machine Jobs & Woz "Borrowed" From, with a strange image screen-burned into the monitor. - Bugs taken from the DNC offices in the Watergate Building (Removed for "Further Study" :) -Various TI and HP calculators, 60's to 70's vintage, and a Pulsar watch (The first digital watch) - An Altair 8800, the original Apple I prototype model, and a Sol computer - A TRS-80 I, an IBM PC, Commodore 64 (Late vintage it looks) a Sun-I Workstation, and a Mac, all propped up on stacks of old Byte, Computerworld, and Misc. other magazines - Various other nick-nacks, like an original Mac system disk and brochure (If you can point, you can use a Mac) A HomeBrew Computer Club sweatshirt on a mannequin that a French couple mistook for Steve Jobs (I'm pretty sure he isn't, and has never been, of Asian descent. :) The camera used to broadcast the first televised Presidential debate, bunches of other stuff I've forgotten..

Air and Space Museum "Computers and Flight" -A Cray 1, S/N 0014. Installed at the Goddard space center, I belive.

-Processor modules from an old model space shuttle (Can you say - over-engineering?) -Processor modules from the Iridium (defunct) system -A MicroVAX II (I have one! Horray!) -The slide rule Goddard used (Really classic computing :) -An ANCIENT IBM mini that I couldn't recognize. It's panels were off. - The last remaining piece of Sputnik; the pin used to keep the battery contacts of the transmitter open, pulled just before launch to activate the transmitter. Also, if you drive out to Rockville, a suburb of D.C., you can drive through this technology park and see Celera and the Human Genome Project, both within a mile of each other..