The Computer Museum (TCM) records contain the remaining records of TCM from its inception in the early 1970s through the various stages of its life in Maynard, Massachusetts, Marlborough, Massachusetts, Boston, Massachusetts, and Moffett Field, and Mountain View, California in the 1990s. The records are maintained in the form of The Computer Museum website http://tcm.computerhistory.org/ . Types of records include annual and other public reports, correspondence, marketing material, and videotaped recordings of lectures. Representations of the exhibitions were not retained, but descriptions and files related to the planning and design of the exhibitions are included. The TCM website was constructed by Gordon Bell in 2015 to be a virtual representation of TCM’s physical space, and is maintained by the Computer History Museum.

The Computer Museum was founded by Ken Olsen and Gordon and Gwen Bell in 1975 as the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) Museum Project. The first exhibit was in a converted closet at DEC’s building in Maynard, Massachusetts. In 1979 it officially became the Digital Computer Museum (DCM), an exhibition site funded and operated by DEC out of its Marlborough headquarter building’s lobby. In 1982 it received non-profit charitable foundation status from the IRS and changed its name to The Computer Museum, and in 1984 it opened to the wider public with a move to downtown Boston where it was co-located with the Children’s Museum on Museum Wharf. In 1996, approximately half of the Museum’s collection was relocated to Moffett Federal Airfield in Mountain View, California as The Computer Museum History Center (TCMHC). In 1999 TCM officially closed, the corporation was dissolved, and the remainder of the collection was moved to TCMHC. In 2000 TCMCH incorporated as a California non-profit, and changed its name to the Computer History Museum, located in Mountain View, California with additional buildings in Milpitas and Fremont.

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Requests for copying and permission to publish, quote, or reproduce any portion of the Computer History Museum’s collection must be from the Computer History Museum.

All records at http://tcm.computerhistory.org are available for research. Files in Series 7 “File archives” are restricted to onsite use and special arrangements must be made with CHM to access the files. Please contact research@computerhistory.org to request access to restricted files.