The world's largest computer museum is not located in Silicon Valley, California, but in Paderborn, Westphalia. And there is a reason for this: between 1992 and 1996, it was set up by a team of experts on the premises of the former headquarters of Nixdorf Computer AG, one of the most important and influential companies on the European computer market at the time.
Typewriters and computer games
The museum's permanent exhibition covers 5,000 years of the past, present and future of information technology, from cuneiform writing, calculating machines and typewriters to the Internet and robotics. The entire tour of the museum is designed as a multimedia journey through time. Typewriters and calculating machines are on display, as are punch card systems, components of the first computers, over 700 pocket calculators and the first PCs. In the latest exhibition area, everything revolves around digital photography, which is presented from its beginnings in the 1980s to the present day.
Trying out and touching are the focus of the experience museum. Visitors can use telephones from the old days, try out new and historical computer games or talk to the virtual being Max. Anyone who wants to can play Pong and Pac-Man again or let the PETER and PETRA robots guide them to selected areas of the exhibition. Highlights include components of the first room-sized electronic computer ENIAC, the on-board computer of the Gemini space capsule, the legendary Apple 1 and the sweeping robot Beppo.
The section on artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics takes a closer look at the machines, some of which have a human appearance. How do robots move? What do they see? Can they think and feel? The principle of programming is illustrated particularly clearly in the CodeLab using a ballet of 49 waving cats that can be set in motion with a few simple commands.
The Smart World vividly demonstrates how our everyday lives are already being influenced by the Internet and sensors. Both informative and playful, it deals with networked mobility, the working world of tomorrow, the blending of real and digital reality and the measured self.
