The Centre for Computing History
The Centre for Computing History (CCH) is a pioneering educational charity that opened at its current site in Cambridge in 2013. CCH was established as an educational charity to tell the story of the Information Age through exploring in a highly interactive way the historical, social and cultural impact of developments in personal computing. It maintains a long-term collection of objects to tell this story and exploits them through learning and events programmes.
The growth and innovation of the computing revolution has been fast and furious. Having created our global society, whereby our thinking, means of communication and the way we organise our lives have been irreversibly transformed, it is now impossible to envisage a world without computers or the internet.
But there is now a generation of people growing up who know very little about how this has all come to pass. The Centre for Computing History tells this story.
CCH is now an accredited museum and visitor attraction with an active visitor base and firm role in the local and tech communities, achieved with a dedicated staff team and a small army of volunteers, without whom we could not succeed.
We aim to be open and welcoming, offering inspirational learning opportunities to a wide range of audiences – from pre-schoolers to the over-70s – so people can confidently and creatively engage with information and digital technologies and their history. We offer a range of learning services on site including programming and electronics workshops, activities exploring the history of computing and other interactive educational opportunities using people's stories along with 1980s BBC Micros, Raspberry Pis and Micro:Bits for school students and the general public.
We also deliver training sessions to teachers so that they have the knowledge, skills and confidence to teach computing and its incredible history to their students in an engaging way.
CCH has an internationally significant collection of vintage computers, ephemera, artefacts, documents and hands-on displays – in total over 40,000 items. The core collection consists of over a thousand historic computers, as well as mobile phones, games consoles, calculators and, importantly, interviews with the pioneers.
The Centre for Computing History receives no government funding. It is overseen by a broad group of volunteer trustees with day-to-day management delegated to a staff team led by Dr Lisa McGerty, who co-founded the museum in 2006.
Products and services
Project Odyssey: The Red Gate Gauntlet
Following presentations from the museum’s trustees and the launch of a new fundraising campaign - Odyssey - on 10 March by museum patron Dr Hermann Hauser, Simon Galbraith, CEO of Redgate Software, has thrown down a symbolic gauntlet*.
What's it all about? Well, the Centre is hoping to raise £110,000 to complete the refurbishment of its main gallery and create a new core exhibition – Tech Odyssey: a learning adventure – which will chart the global impact of the computing revolution.
Curator, Jason Fitzpatrick, explains: “In its present condition this building fails to do justice to the richness and variety of our collection. Although visitors can see, touch and use many of the ‘superstar’ machines of the 70s, 80s and 90s, we lack the funds needed to create an exhibition that charts how each of these computers represents a step towards the small, powerful, multi-purpose devices most of us use today.
“Refurbishment of the gallery and creation of a new exhibition, Odyssey, will help us tell the inspirational and epic story of the computing revolution to anyone – young and old, techie and non-geek alike.”
“We are hugely grateful to Simon Galbraith for this very generous commitment. Redgate Software has presented us with a wonderful opportunity; it’s also a big, big challenge. We are very conscious that the clock is ticking…”
Since opening its doors in Cambridge at the end of 2013, the Centre has attracted over 5,000 children. On average, it is visited by one school a week and that number is growing.
If you would like to discuss this appeal further please contact : elaine@computinghistory.org.uk.
Click here to make a contribution.
Thank you so much!
*An oversized mock-up Gauntlet game box.
