The Computer History Museum

The  Computer History Museum located in Mountain View, CA collects and maintains artifacts of all things related to computing. Their collection spans more than fifty years. If you have a hard-to-find rare piece of computing nostalgia, the CHM meets each week to discuss items offered for donation. Their online form makes donating to the museum easy and painless.

A recent e-mail from the curating team is as follows:

Our curatorial team meets weekly to discuss offers of new donations. Following a thorough search of our database to determine whether the Museum’s collection may already include representative examples of the material(s) you are offering, either I or the Associate Registrar will contact you if we require additional information or photographs of your item or when a decision has been reached, typically 1-2 weeks.

Before submitting an offer, the CHM’s website has a list of items they are no longer accepting. Some of those items are as follows:

• A/KSR-33 Teletype
• Amiga 500/1000/2000
• Analog televisions
• Any PC ‘clone’ of any era
• Apple II (+/c/e/gs)
• Apple III
• Atari 400/800/1040/1200 XL/ST
• Bell & Howell Apple computers
• Brother Word Processors (any model)
• Coleco Adam
• Commodore 64
• Commodore 64 portable executive computer
• Commodore PET (any model)
• Commodore VIC-20
• Compaq laptops (any model)
• Compaq portable (any model)
• Eagle PC
• Epson laptop / portable (any model)
• Floppy disk drives
• FORTRAN 25th anniversary video (any format)
• Franklin Ace 1000
• Gavilan (any model)
• GENIAC
• Go Corp. Tablet Computers (any model)
• GO/EO (any model)
• GRiD System Corporation GRiD GridPad 2260 “Convertible” personal computer
• Heathkit H89
• Mass produced software less than 10 years old
• Mice (unless 1st generation)
• Mindset
• MODEMs
• Monitors
• Morrow Pivot
• Most CP/M machines, including: Altos, Xitan, Onyx, Cromemco, Northstar, Ohio Scientific
• Motorized vehicles of any type
• Multimeters
• NeXT Cube
• NeXTstation
• Osborne (any model)
• Oscilloscopes
• Otrona Attache Portable Computer
• Poqet palmtop

Books, magazines, and journals may be acceptable items for donation. So if you think you have the right book or trade publication, don’t hesitate to make an offer.