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The Smithsonian's Quest for IT's Ruby Slippers

The National Museum of American History continues its effort to determine what IT devices have played or will play an important role in the flow of history even as the facility still lacks a separate large IT exhibit.

By Patrick Thibodeau

November 09, 2009 — Computerworld —

Among the artifacts in the National Museum of American History's vast collection is an egg that served as a prop in the 1979 movie, Alien .

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What makes the egg more important than the iPhone, which has yet to be selected by the caretakers of the national museum? The responsibility for answering such questions lies with Peggy Kidwell, the museum's curator of mathematics, and Petrina Foti, the manager of its computer collection.

Kidwell and Foti try to stay outside of technology's relentless marketing bubble in their work to determine what is really important in the flow of history. For example, the curators have to be convinced that a technology like the iPhone has enough cultural significance to have landmark status. "We like to have a little perspective," said Kidwell. On the other hand, the Radio Shack TRS-80 , also known as the "Trash-80," which was unveiled in 1977, sits in the collection, as does an Apple 1 from 1976, a telegraph from 1844, a 30-ton, World War II era Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) computer, and a mouse or two.

Kidwell said the selection process keys on the story behind an object. It's why Evel Knievel's 1977 Harley-Davidson XR-750 is in the collection rather than another Harley. The item has to have near universal cultural significance, like the href="http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/aroundthemall/2008/11/theres-no-place-like-home-the-ruby-slippers-return-to-the-museum-of-american-history/">Ruby Slippers from the 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz, she added.

Today, nearly all of the American History Museum's prized technology collection remains in storage, where it was placed when the facility was closed in 2006 for a massive renovation. Before the renovation, the 900 artifacts in the IT collection were displayed in its own 14,000 square-foot space. The museum reopened a year ago without a standalone IT collection.

The next IT display will be part of an exhibit that aims to show how technology has fit into American commercial development. The museum is trying to raise $1 million to help fund the exhibit, and hopes that work on the program is completed in time for the museum's 50th anniversary in 2014.

Since the renovation, only a few glass displays showing technology have been set up, including one showing the mobilization of math and science that came after the the former Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite in 1957. The display includes a Digi-Comp toy computer from 1965, the year the Smithsonian completed its first computer display. The Digi-Comp "was about as close as many Americans ever got to a computer in 1965," said Kidwell.