At last, some of the most famous machines in computing history have a home. Nestled into a huge display area called Visible Storage are parts of early computers such as the Eniac and the Johnniac; an Enigma machine; the IBM computer that was Arthur C Clarke's model for Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey; and a floor-to-ceiling "PC Wall" of early PCs that's enough to make a geek weep with joy.
The exhibits are part of the diverse collection belonging to Silicon Valley's Computer History Museum, which has just opened its doors in a dramatic building in the heart of the Valley, after years of being squashed into warehouses provided by Nasa.
Ironically, the move was possible because the new home, a former Silicon Graphics building, only became available and affordable following the economic battering of the industry that the museum lovingly documents.
The relocation is giving the museum a much higher profile. Now it has regular weekly tours and, eventually, will open as a drop-in facility complete with research library and archives, a lecture theatre, a shop and more.
"Computers are so important to our society, our technologies, to people. I think if you can chronicle their story, you can inspire people - inspire them to innovate and create," says John C Toole, the museum's chief executive. This is the perfect time to be gathering and documenting computers, he says, while many of the industry pioneers are still around.
Certainly, the museum's donor list reads like an industry who's who, and its board of trustees includes industry legends like C Gordon Bell, whose personal collection of early calculating devices forms part of the museum's exhibits.
Nearby sit some of the earliest mechanical devices - a working replica of the 1889 Hollerith Census Machine, created to tabulate the US census, which became part of IBM; and some other early punch-card machines, the forerunners of modern computers.
Looming in the back is a veritable hardware hall of fame. There's a chunk of Eniac (electronic numerical integrator and calculator), the room-sized second world war invention with 18,000 vacuum tubes, designed to calculate missile trajectories.
Then there's the Johnniac - a massive computer built in 1954 by the Rand Corporation, named for computing pioneer John von Neumann. The size of five refrigerators, the Johnniac is notable for having a memory - though its entire brain capacity was a mere 4K, about the size of a brief email.
Along one aisle stretch two famous machines - the enormous Wisc (Wisconsin integrally synchronised computer), which computing pioneer Gene Amdahl built in1952 as part of his PhD project in theoretical physics. And there's one of only 46 Sage (semi-automated ground environment) computers, part of a $10bn cold war initiative to detect Russian fighter planes and missiles.
"The only piece of machinery that came with a cigarette lighter and ashtray," quips Toole. And the museum houses several examples of Cray supercomputers, including one nicknamed the world's most expensive love seat because circular seating covers the cooling system.
Only 15% of the museum's collection is on display, but the archive includes advertisements, manuals, robots, videos, software, gaming devices and prototypes, including one for the Palm handheld.
Toole notes that much of computing history has been lost, because many companies - especially dotcom-era ones - didn't save objects or documentation. Also, for branding reasons, some companies obliterate the history of the companies they acquire, he says. He hopes to get a programme under way to advise companies on what to save, and how to save it. Much of the museum's collection comes from key industry people who stored items they loved, he says.
Is there one object he'd love to acquire for the collection more than any other? "A full Univac computer would be really cool to have," he says.
