History of Computing Collection

Gems of the Collection

The Collection has multiple items of particular interest, be it for their rarity, their historical relevance, or simply because we think they are cool.

You can browse the Gems of the Hardware Collection here:

RCA COSMAC Development Kit

An all-in-one computer development prototyping kit, by the Radio Corporation of America. Based on the 1802 processor, from 1974.

Atari Sparrow

A prototype of the Atari Falcon computer from 1992. One of 59 known to exist.

ICL PERQ

A workstation computer from 1980, built by the Three Rivers Computer Corporation of America, in collaboration with ICL of the UK.

SPOC

The Swansea Psychology Operator Controller systems were purpose-built computers for use in live animal testing in the Psychology department.

DEC PDP-11 (/10)

The backplane of a PDP 11/10 mainframe, which is missing the CPU and memory planes.

The Trinity of 1977

The three best-selling computers of 1977: the Tandy-Radioshack TRS-80, the Apple II (in our case, IIe), and the Commodore PET 2001.

Macintosh Portable

A fully portable Macintosh Plus, with a very high-end (for the time!) screen, lead-acid battery, and a boatload of design problems.

Amstrad PCW8512

A Z80-based word processor with 512kb of RAM, Amstrad's first computer aimed at home offices. Uses the Compact Floppy Disk format for main storage.

Nascom 2

One example of a kit computer; the Kenilworth case for the NASCOM 2 uses real wood in its body! The Nascom is a competitor to the ZX series of computers.

Atari TT

Atari's UNIX-based workstation computer. Now that's an interesting sentence..

Microsoft Hololens 2

A fully portable, self-contained, wearable holographic spatial computer.

You can browse the Gems of the Archival Collection here:

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