Institutional Nostalgia - Museum Victoria's cabinet of computing curiosities

Abstract

Museum Victoria has a significant collection of objects that could be described as 'computing curiosities'. Undoubtedly, its most important exhibit is CSIRAC (formerly CSIR Mk1), which was the world's fourth electronic digital computer and the only remaining intact first generation computer in the world. The collection of computers and related items, including calculators, range in date from before CSIRAC (1949) to the iPad. This article examines some of these items, what they did and how they were used at the time. © 2012 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.