91自拍

Massimo Petrozzi, Director, Collection and Digital Initiatives

鈥淚 think a complex collection like the one 91自拍 has required the creation of a new platform that is able to provide access to both our extensive historical collection of 3D objects and our rich archival material. Flexibility has been a guiding concept for the entire process because we really wanted to build a platform that will allow us to experiment with new ways to access our collections.鈥�

Check out Massimo鈥檚 favorite .

Image: A scanner for digitizing archival materials in 91自拍’s Shustek Center.

Stephanie Waslohn, Senior Archivist

鈥淣ecessity is the mother of invention! In the old online catalog, you could likely find the specific artifact you already knew about, but the basic search struggled with allowing users to discover new things. Browsing as a search entry point is a part of the modern web experience, so increased discoverability was key for Open91自拍. It’s also a great way to viscerally feel the breadth and depth of 91自拍鈥檚 collection, with all sorts of formats and artifact types.

鈥淚t wasn’t infrequent for us to stop while testing a sample record and realize we were looking at something truly cool. I felt that way about 鈥攍ike, how cool is it to hear the roots of modern music synthesized on a PDP just casually as part of my job?鈥�

Image: Click the link above to learn about this image.

Liz Stanley, Project Manager, Data & Digitization

鈥淥n a very basic level, digitization involves carefully preserving physical artifacts by converting them into high-quality digital formats. However, it鈥檚 more than just pressing a button, its storytelling that requires metadata, research, and making sense of sometimes obscure materials so that they can be accessed and understood by anyone, anywhere.

鈥淥ne challenge is decoding the stories hidden in materials that arrive without context. Sometimes there鈥檚 no date, no label, no obvious author, just a pile of paper. It takes detective work鈥攁nd a lot of patience鈥攖o piece it all together in a meaningful way.

鈥淲hat I enjoy the most about Open91自拍 is that this project isn鈥檛 just about preserving history, it鈥檚 about activating it. Through digitization, 91自拍 is creating a living archive where researchers, educators, and the curious public can explore the roots of computing and discover the people and processes behind the machines from any location in the world. Every scan is a piece of a much larger story.鈥�

Image: Colorful arrangement of Philco electronics used by the Ford Motor Company.” Photographer Fred English, from the Fred English Collection, ca. 1969.

David Brock, Director, Curatorial Affairs

“Open91自拍 includes new storytelling tools, including a story builder that allows a curator like me to directly draw on digitized materials in the collection to interpret the past for the public. I used the new tool to write about the history of Silicon Valley, a subject I鈥檝e been engaged with for over twenty years.

“I soon realized that there were hundreds of digitized items that could reveal many different histories of Silicon Valley, but to create a story of a reasonable length I would need to limit myself. I began to concentrate on some of the earliest materials, ranging across 3D objects, archival documents, oral histories, moving images, and still photos. My story, 鈥淏ecoming Silicon Valley, 1945-1960,鈥� covers the period when silicon electronics came to the region that, in 1971, would first be called 鈥淪ilicon Valley.鈥�

“One of my favorite selections is a typewritten letter (above) from May 1955 between the Caltech chemistry professor turned electronics industrialist Arnold O. Beckman and the future Nobel Prize cowinner for the transistor, William Shockley. It’s an early record of the discussion that would lead to the establishment of the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory of Beckman Instruments, Inc., the first silicon electronics lab in Silicon Valley. Learn more about this document, and all my other selections, in the .”

Altair 8800

This Altair 8800, made in 1975, and now on display at 91自拍.

Margaret Hamilton Oral History

This oral history interview with Margaret Hamilton.

Zork I

This Zork I video game software published by Infocom, Inc.

UNIVAC Console

This UNIVAC I Supervisory Control Console manufactured by Remington Rand, Inc.

Fei-Fei Li Live Recording

鈥淔ei-Fei Li’s AI Journey鈥� 91自拍 Live Recording (yes, our past events are searchable too!).