Annotated Bibliography and References - The Technical and Social History of Software Engineering - page 442

Computer History Museum absorbed many of the displays from the Boston Com-
puter Museum when it ceased to operate in 1999.
The computer museum has a rich collection of computing devices and also
large collections of reference materials. The museum features a useful computer
timeline from prehistory through the modern era. In addition to being a museum,
there are also courses and interactive materials. Some information is broader than
just computers, such as a history of Silicon Valley before it became a technical
hotbed. (I lived in Silicon Valley in the 1960s and '70s and saw its transformation
from fruit orchards to high-technology companies.)
The Computer History Museum also has a subsection dealing with the history
of computer software, as discussed later in this bibliography.
Computer Science Lab; www.computersciencelab.com
This is a website that offers software training materials. However, it is cited
in this topic because it also has a beautiful monograph titled “An Illustrated
History of Computers,” with very good pictures ranging from stone counting
boards and early abacus versions through modern computers. Many of the pictures
are in color. The specific website for the illustrated history is

www.computersciencelabe.com/ComputerHistory/History.htm .
These interesting photographs provide a quick sweep of human attempts to
speed up calculations from the medieval era through modern times. The early
mechanical calculators are of great historical interest.
Computerspielemuseum; www.computerspielemuseum.de
This interesting museum is located in Berlin, Germany. One of its unique as-
pects is a very wide-ranging set of displays dealing with computer games. Com-
puter gaming has become a major subindustry of both hardware and software. In
some areas such as computer graphics, the game industry is actually ahead of oth-
er software fields.
In fact, the massively interactive games where thousands of players use avatars
to move about virtual worlds would have great value in other fields such as edu-
cation, virtual conferences, military planning, and even business planning. With
actual travel becoming more expensive and less convenient and enjoyable, it can
be predicted that immersive hyperrealistic simulated environments will move out
of the game world and into other forms of activity where groups or crowds need
to communicate.