The American Computer & Robotics Museum (ACRM), formerly known as the American Computer Museum, is a museum of the history of computing,

communications Communication (from la, communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term may also refer to the message communicated through such transmissions or the field of inquir ...

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech ...

and

robotics Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrat ...

that is located in

Bozeman Bozeman is a city and the county seat of Gallatin County, Montana, United States. Located in southwest Montana, the 2020 census put Bozeman's population at 53,293, making it the fourth-largest city in Montana. It is the principal city of ...

Montana Montana () is a state in the Mountain West division of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota and South Dakota to the east, Wyoming to the south, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columb ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

. The museum's mission is "... to explore the past and imagine the future of the Information Age through thought-provoking exhibits, innovative storytelling, and the bold exchange of ideas."American Computer and Robotics Museum Mission & Vision. Accessed July 23, 2021. https://acrmuseum.org/mission-vision.

History of the museum

The American Computer & Robotics Museum was founded by George and Barbara Keremedjiev as a

non-profit organization A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

in May 1990 in

Bozeman, Montana Bozeman is a city and the county seat of Gallatin County, Montana, United States. Located in southwest Montana, the 2020 census put Bozeman's population at 53,293, making it the fourth-largest city in Montana. It is the principal city o ...

.American Computer and Robotics Museum. Accessed July 23, 2021. https://acrmuseum.org/. It is likely the oldest extant museum dedicated to the history of computers in the world."The Computer Museum". Computerhistory.org. Computer History Museum. Retrieved July 23, 2021. The museum's artifacts trace over 4,000 years of computing history and information technology.Balogh, Ray. “American Computer and Robotics Museum, Bozeman, Montana.” The Municipal. The Municipal, June 25, 2021. http://www.themunicipal.com/2021/06/american-computer-and-robotics-museum-bozeman-montana/. George Keremedjiev passed away in November 2018, but his wife Barbara, the Museum Board, and the museum's Executive Director continue working toward his goals to "collect, preserve, interpret, and display the artifacts and history of the information age."Publika, Liz. “The American Computer & Robotics Museum: Interview with Executive Director, Eleanor Barker.” ARTpublika Magazine. ARTpublika Magazine, July 9, 2020. https://www.artpublikamag.com/post/the-american-computer-robotics-museum-interview-with-executive-director-eleanor-barker.

Exhibits on display

The museum has several permanent exhibits on display. The Benchmarks of the Information Age provides an overview of information technology from roughly 1860 B.C.E. with the development of ancient writing systems up to 1976 C.E. with the Apple I personal computer. Another significant exhibit is the NASA Apollo program, including NASA artifacts on loan from the

National Air and Space Museum The National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution, also called the Air and Space Museum, is a museum in Washington, D.C., in the United States. Established in 1946 as the National Air Museum, it opened its main building on the N ...

, such as an

Apollo Guidance Computer The Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) was a digital computer produced for the Apollo program that was installed on board each Apollo command module (CM) and Apollo Lunar Module (LM). The AGC provided computation and electronic interfaces for guidanc ...

and a watch worn on the Moon by Apollo 15 Commander David Scott, as well as the last surviving mainframe from the Apollo 11 mission, a

UNIVAC 418 UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) was a line of electronic digital stored-program computers starting with the products of the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation. Later the name was applied to a division of the Remington Rand company and ...

-II. Another exhibit includes a comprehensive collection of early personal computers like the

Altair 8800 The Altair 8800 is a microcomputer designed in 1974 by MITS and based on the Intel 8080 CPU. Interest grew quickly after it was featured on the cover of the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics and was sold by mail order through advertiseme ...

, IMSAI 8080,

Commodore PET The Commodore PET is a line of personal computers produced starting in 1977 by Commodore International. A single all-in-one case combines a MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor, Commodore BASIC in read-only memory, keyboard, monochrome monitor, ...

, Sol-20,

Apple II The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-m ...

, Apple III,

Apple Lisa Lisa is a desktop computer developed by Apple, released on January 19, 1983. It is one of the first personal computers to present a graphical user interface (GUI) in a machine aimed at individual business users. Its development began in 1978. ...

, Apple Mac,

KIM-1 The KIM-1, short for ''Keyboard Input Monitor'', is a small 6502-based single-board computer developed and produced by MOS Technology, Inc. and launched in 1976. It was very successful in that period, due to its low price (thanks to the inexp ...

, and

SYM-1 The SYM-1 is a single board "trainer" computer produced by Synertek Systems in 1975. It was designed by Ray Holt. Originally called the VIM-1 (Versatile Input Monitor), that name was later changed to SYM-1. The SYM-1 is a close copy of the pop ...

. The museum has several more exhibits detailing

Enigma Enigma may refer to: *Riddle, someone or something that is mysterious or puzzling Biology *ENIGMA, a class of gene in the LIM domain Computing and technology * Enigma (company), a New York-based data-technology startup * Enigma machine, a family ...

codebreaking during World War II, neural computing and artificial intelligence, office and communications technology, robotics and automation with Hollywood artifacts, video games, and the future of computing with an eye toward quantum computing. The museum's current special exhibit is the Vintage Mac Museum, a private collection recently donated to the ACRM by the family of collector Adam Rosen.

Awards

In 1994 the American Computer Museum won the ''Dibner Award for Excellence in Museum Exhibits'' from the Society for the History of Technology.“The Dibner Award.” Society for the History of Technology (SHOT), May 1, 2021. https://www.historyoftechnology.org/about-us/awards-prizes-and-grants/the-dibner-award/. Beginning in 1997, The ''American Computer Museum'' has presented the Stibitz-Wilson awards with support from

Montana State University Montana State University (MSU) is a public land-grant research university in Bozeman, Montana. It is the state's largest university. MSU offers baccalaureate degrees in 60 fields, master's degrees in 68 fields, and doctoral degrees in 35 fie ...

. The George R. Stibitz Computer & Communications Innovator Award is named for Dr. George R. Stibitz, who first built the first binary adding unit in 1937. The Edward O. Wilson Biodiversity Technology Innovator Award is named for Harvard Emeritus Professor Dr. Edward O. Wilson. In 2011, the museum formalized a new category of award called Lifetime Achievement.

Stibitz Award winners

* 1997 –

Arthur Burks Arthur Walter Burks (October 13, 1915 – May 14, 2008) was an American mathematician who worked in the 1940s as a senior engineer on the project that contributed to the design of the ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic digital computer. ...

, Chuan Chu,

Jack Kilby Jack St. Clair Kilby (November 8, 1923 – June 20, 2005) was an American electrical engineer who took part (along with Robert Noyce of Fairchild) in the realization of the first integrated circuit while working at Texas Instruments (TI) in 1 ...

Jerry Merryman Jerry Dale Merryman (June 17, 1932 – February 27, 2019) was an American electrical engineer and inventor. He was a member of the team at Texas Instruments that developed the first pocket calculator in 1965. Early life Merryman was born on June ...

, James Van Tassel, Maury Irvine,

Eldon Hall Eldon Hall was the leader of hardware design efforts for the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) at MIT, and advocated the use of integrated circuits for this task. He wrote extensively of the development of the AGC, culminating in his 1996 book, ''J ...

, Ted Hoff,

Federico Faggin Federico Faggin (, ; born 1 December 1941) is an Italian physicist, engineer, inventor and entrepreneur. He is best known for designing the first commercial microprocessor, the Intel 4004. He led the 4004 (MCS-4) project and the design group d ...

* 1998 – Ed Roberts, Doug Engelbart * 1999 – James Harris, Vinton G. Cerf,

Robert E. Kahn Robert Elliot Kahn (born December 23, 1938) is an American electrical engineer who, along with Vint Cerf, first proposed the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP), the fundamental communication protocols at the hear ...

* 2000 –

Steve Wozniak Stephen Gary Wozniak (; born August 11, 1950), also known by his nickname "Woz", is an American electronics engineer, computer programmer, philanthropist, inventor, and entrepreneur, technology entrepreneur. In 1976, with business partner Steve ...

Tim Berners-Lee Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (born 8 June 1955), also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web. He is a Professorial Fellow of Computer Science at the University of Oxford and a profes ...

, Ray Tomlinson * 2001 – Ted Hoff, Federico Faggin and Stan Mazor (together) * 2002 – Ralph Baer, Martin Cooper,

Leroy Hood Leroy "Lee" Edward Hood (born October 10, 1938) is an American biologist who has served on the faculties at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the University of Washington. Hood has developed ground-breaking scientific instrum ...

, Klein Gilhousen, James Russell, Jon Titus * 2005 –

Ross Perot Henry Ross Perot (; June 27, 1930 – July 9, 2019) was an American business magnate, billionaire, politician and philanthropist. He was the founder and chief executive officer of Electronic Data Systems and Perot Systems. He ran an indepe ...

, Paul Baran, John Blankenbaker * 2006 – Edward O. Wilson * 2010 –

Barbara Liskov Barbara Liskov (born November 7, 1939 as Barbara Jane Huberman) is an American computer scientist who has made pioneering contributions to programming languages and distributed computing. Her notable work includes the development of the Liskov su ...

, Max Mathews, Steve Sasson * 2012 –

Robert Metcalfe Robert Melancton Metcalfe (born April 7, 1946) is an engineer and entrepreneur from the United States who helped pioneer the Internet starting in 1970. He co-invented Ethernet, co-founded 3Com and formulated Metcalfe's law, which describes the e ...

Vic Hayes Victor "Vic" Hayes (born July 31, 1941 Surabaya, Dutch East Indies) is a former Senior Research Fellow at the Delft University of Technology. His role in establishing and chairing the IEEE 802.11 Standards Working Group for Wireless Local Area Ne ...

* 2013 –

Walt Disney Walter Elias Disney (; December 5, 1901December 15, 1966) was an American animator, film producer and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. As a film p ...

(posthumously awarded),

Chuck Hull Chuck Hull (Charles W. Hull; born May 12, 1939) is the co-founder, executive vice president and chief technology officer of 3D Systems. He is one of the inventors of the SLA 3D printer, the first commercial rapid prototyping technology, and t ...

John Henry Holland John Henry Holland (February 2, 1929 – August 9, 2015) was an American scientist and Professor of psychology and Professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He was a pioneer in what became ...

, Jean B. Sweeney * 2014 –

Eric Horvitz Eric Joel Horvitz () is an American computer scientist, and Technical Fellow at Microsoft, where he serves as the company's first Chief Scientific Officer. He was previously the director of Microsoft Research Labs, including research centers in Re ...

Douglas Hofstadter Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born February 15, 1945) is an American scholar of cognitive science, physics, and comparative literature whose research includes concepts such as the sense of self in relation to the external world, consciousness, a ...

Hans Moravec Hans Peter Moravec (born November 30, 1948, Kautzen, Austria) is an adjunct faculty member at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, USA. He is known for his work on robotics, artificial intelligence, and writings ...

Edward Feigenbaum Edward Albert Feigenbaum (born January 20, 1936) is a computer scientist working in the field of artificial intelligence, and joint winner of the 1994 ACM Turing Award. He is often called the "father of expert systems." Education and early life ...

, David Andes, Cynthia Breazeal * 2015 –

David Ferrucci David Ferrucci was the principal investigator who in 2007–2011 led a team of IBM and academic researchers and engineers to the development of the Watson computer system that won a television quiz. Ferrucci graduated from Manhattan College, w ...

, Robert Gunderson * 2016 –

Alan Turing Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical ...

(posthumously awarded), Joseph Desch, Mary Shaw * 2017 –

Jennifer Doudna Jennifer Anne Doudna (; born February 19, 1964) is an American biochemist who has done pioneering work in CRISPR gene editing, and made other fundamental contributions in biochemistry and genetics. Doudna was one of the first women to share a ...

Michelle Simmons Michelle Yvonne Simmons, (born 14 July 1967) is a Scientia Professor of Quantum Physics in the Faculty of Science at the University of New South Wales and has twice been an Australian Research Council Federation Fellow and is an Australian Res ...

, Mark Ritter, Rufus Cone, Jerry M. Chow, Jay GambettaMSU News Service. “Computer and Biology Pioneers to Be Honored Dec. 1 at MSU.” MSU News. Montana State University, November 13, 2017. https://www.montana.edu/news/17275. * 2018 – Donna Dubinsky, Bonnie J. DunbarMSU News Service. “Computer and Biology Pioneers to Be Honored Sept. 21 at MSU.” MSU News. Montana State University, September 5, 2018. https://www.montana.edu/news/17955/computer-and-biology-pioneers-to-be-honored-sept-21-at-msu.

Wilson Award winners

* 2009 – Ignacio Rodriguez-Iturbe, Steve Running, Michael Soulé, David Ward * 2010 –

Sir Alec Jeffreys Sir Alec John Jeffreys, (born 9 January 1950) is a British geneticist known for developing techniques for genetic fingerprinting and DNA profiling which are now used worldwide in forensic science to assist police detective work and to resolve ...

Lynn Margulis Lynn Margulis (born Lynn Petra Alexander; March 5, 1938 – November 22, 2011) was an American evolutionary biologist, and was the primary modern proponent for the significance of symbiosis in evolution. Historian Jan Sapp has said that "Lynn Ma ...

David Quammen David Quammen (born February 24, 1948) is an American science, nature, and travel writer and the author of fifteen books. His articles have appeared in ''Outside Magazine'', '' National Geographic'', '' Harper's'', '' Rolling Stone'', ''The New ...

* 2011 – Jim Lotimer, John Kress, Peter Belhumeur, David Jacobs * 2012 –

Paul Anastas Paul T. Anastas (born May 16, 1962 in Quincy, Massachusetts)David E. Newton''Chemistry of the Environment.''Infobase Publishing, 2009, , p. 185. is an American scientist, inventor, author, entrepreneur, professor, and public servant. He is ...

May Berenbaum May Roberta Berenbaum (born July 22, 1953) is an American entomologist whose research focuses on the chemical interactions between herbivorous insects and their host plants, and the implications of these interactions on the organization of natura ...

Gary Strobel Gary A. Strobel (born September 23, 1938) is an American microbiologist and naturalist. He was co-contributor to the discovery that somaclonal variation occurs in plants and can be used for plant improvement. The discovery of the Ri plasmid in A ...

* 2013 – Frans de Waal, * 2014 – Rebecca D. Costa, Dorothy Hinshaw Patent, Cathy Whitlock,

John Charles Priscu John C. Priscu ( ro, Prișcu; born 20 September 1952, Las Vegas, Nevada), is a Romanian-American scientist who is the current Professor of Ecology in the Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences at Montana State University. He is a ...

* 2015 –

Janine Benyus Janine M. Benyus (born 1958) is an American natural sciences writer, innovation consultant, and author. After writing books on wildlife and animal behavior, she coined the term Biomimicry to describe intentional problem-solving design inspired ...

, Kjetil Våge, Laurie Marker * 2016 – Dan Wenk * 2017 –

John Heminway John Heminway (born 1944) is a filmmaker, author, and conservationist who traveled the globe for his films, photography, and novels, many of which focus on the natural world. Early life John Heminway was born in 1944 in New York City to John ...

* 2018 – Diana Six, Andone C. Lavery, Bonnie J. Dunbar

Lifetime Achievement Award Winners

* 2011 –

* 2017 – Jonathan Titus

Stibitz-Wilson Awards

* 2022 - Paula Apsell,

J. Craig Venter John Craig Venter (born October 14, 1946) is an American biotechnologist and businessman. He is known for leading one of the first draft sequences of the human genome and assembled the first team to transfect a cell with a synthetic chromosome. ...

Collection

The ACRM's collection contains a wide variety of objects that span over 4,000 years of information technology history, beginning with a Babylonian cuneiform tablet dated to between 1860 and 1837 B.C.E. and a replica of the

Antikythera Mechanism The Antikythera mechanism ( ) is an Ancient Greek hand-powered orrery, described as the oldest example of an analogue computer used to predict astronomical positions and eclipses decades in advance. It could also be used to track the four-y ...

, the earliest known geared mechanism, circa 80 B.C.E. The Antikythera Mechanism is an

ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic pe ...

analog computer An analog computer or analogue computer is a type of computer that uses the continuous variation aspect of physical phenomena such as electrical, mechanical, or hydraulic quantities (''analog signals'') to model the problem being solved. In ...

and

orrery An orrery is a mechanical model of the Solar System that illustrates or predicts the relative positions and motions of the planets and moons, usually according to the heliocentric model. It may also represent the relative sizes of these bodies ...

used to predict astronomical positions and eclipses for calendar and astrological purposes. The ACRM has a large collection of historical books, documents, and artifacts related to the history of computing, communications, and knowledge dating back to 1605, including original manuscripts by

Francis Bacon Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Bacon led the advancement of both ...

and Rene Descartes and original copies of Newton's ''Principia'' & ''Opticks'' and Locke's ''Essay Concerning Human Understanding''. The museum also has a vast collection of early office technologies including mechanical adding machines like the

Arithmometer The arithmometer (french: arithmomètre) was the first digital mechanical calculator strong enough and reliable enough to be used daily in an office environment. This calculator could add and subtract two numbers directly and could perform long ...

, electromechanical/electronic calculators (Friden, SCM, Monroe, Mathatron, Anita, Cal Tech (calculator), and Wang), telephones, telegraphs, typewriters, cash registers, and several telephone switchboards. It also holds an IBM 409 (relay-based tabulator) and a IBM 604 (vacuum tube calculator), mechanical adding machines, and a variety of slide rules. The museum also has military technology, including a Minuteman 1 Missile Guidance Computer and a

Norden bombsight The Norden Mk. XV, known as the Norden M series in U.S. Army service, is a bombsight that was used by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) and the United States Navy during World War II, and the United States Air Force in the Korean ...

. The museum's collection also includes mechanical, electrical, and electronic toys, an industrial robot, and early consumer robots like Hubot. Additionally, the museum has a replica of the Model K, the first binary adder, built for the museum by its inventor, George R. Stibitz. Also, the ACRM holds many mainframe computers and associated hardware from the 1950s to 1990s including the IBM 1620 Model II, the IBM

System/360 The IBM System/360 (S/360) is a family of mainframe computer systems that was announced by IBM on April 7, 1964, and delivered between 1965 and 1978. It was the first family of computers designed to cover both commercial and scientific applica ...

Model 20, the Burroughs 205,

PDP-8 The PDP-8 is a 12-bit minicomputer that was produced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). It was the first commercially successful minicomputer, with over 50,000 units being sold over the model's lifetime. Its basic design follows the pioneer ...

, PDP-8/ and the

UNIVAC 1004 UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) was a line of electronic digital stored-program computers starting with the products of the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation. Later the name was applied to a division of the Remington Rand company and ...

. Signed artifacts at the ACRM include an original

signed by Ed Roberts and an original

Apple I The Apple Computer 1, originally released as the Apple Computer and known later as the Apple I or Apple-1, is an 8-bit desktop computer released by the Apple Computer Company (now Apple Inc.) in 1976. It was designed by Steve Wozniak. The i ...

signed and donated by

. The museum also has an original January 1975 Popular Electronics Magazine announcing the Altair signed by Ed Roberts,

Bill Gates William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions ...

Paul Allen Paul Gardner Allen (January 21, 1953 – October 15, 2018) was an American business magnate, computer programmer, researcher, investor, and philanthropist. He co-founded Microsoft Corporation with childhood friend Bill Gates in 1975, whic ...

and Monte Davidoff.

References

External links

American Computer & Robotics Museum website
{{DEFAULTSORT:American Computer and Robotics Museum Museums established in 1990 Computer museums in the United States History museums in Montana Museums in Bozeman, Montana 1990 establishments in Montana Science museums in Montana