origin and history
This museum was
founded in 1837 under the name of Bennet Woodcroft from the collection of Royal
Society of Arts and surplus items from the Great Exhibition as part of the
south Kensington Museum, together with what is now Victoria and Albert Museum.
Collection
The museum currently
holds a collection of a whopping 300.000 items including famous items as
Stephenson’s Rocket (which is the oldest surviving steam locomotive); the first
jet engine, the Apollo 10 command module; a reconstruction of Francis Crick and
James Watson’s model of DNA and some of the earliest remaining steam engines
(this also includes the first ever steam engine.
Objects and their stories
The flying ambulance
was devised by someone named Larrey (Napoleon's chief surgeon
Dominique). It was used to evacuate the wounded from the battlefield. When an
injured soldier was found it was put in the flying ambulance. It was used to escort severely
wounded out of the battlefield and to treat wounded soldiers on site.
The Graphical User Interface (GUI). It could run mouse-based programmes which allowed the user to navigate
around the screen using a mouse, clicking on files. This was an early version of the kind of graphical navigation we're used
to today.
This was a big change from the command line interfaces of other
computers, which required the user to enter text instructions (commands) to run
programmes.
The Alto was never developed as a commercial product—but many in the
computer industry visited to admire its design as it went through its paces.
One of these was Steve Jobs. With Steve Wozniak, Jobs had started Apple
Computers in 1976, both of them college drop-outs and initially, like Ed
Roberts, working from a garage.
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