A few years ago, one of my buddies got a research scientist job at IBM T. J. Watson Research Center at Yorktown Heights and I got a friend&family pass visiting their building there - inside it's amazing, considering this was built in 1950s. I remember there was a long hallway with invention exhibits, some of the most iconic inventions in computer hardware, ICs, CPUs were on display. Pretty amazing.
The arc-shape building reminded me Apple Park in Cupertino, except TJ Watson center was built decades earlier.
I was at the Great Oaks (former IBM) facility in San Jose a few months ago. It's a massive place and now owned by HGST (a Western Digital Company), for whom I work. There is still a major amount of storage R&D going on there but, somewhat sadly, a number of the old IBM buildings with their distinctive block tile patterns, as seen in the film, are being demolished to make way for new facilities.
Edit: You can see a RAMAC unit at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View - well worth a visit if you're into computer stuff.
The Computer History Museum is really cool! I highly recommend geeks check it out if you are in the area .. especially if you can catch some of the demonstrations/tours.
Over by Google in Mountain View is the Computer History Museum, the largest computer museum in the US. Check the hours, its worth a look if you enjoy computing history.
Me too – I saw it at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. Gorgeous machine! The museum was great too, highly recommend a visit to anyone interested in the history of computing.
It's a great museum. I gotta say even as a 80's programmer kid, those old computers are extremely hard to get to do anything. It had tens of old working computers I had never seen before, many from decades before I was born still running. Pretty incredible.
They have one at the Compute History Museum, although it’s behind glass. It’s worth going here for everything else they have too - try to go when they have an IBM 1401 demo going.
+1 for the Computer History Museum. That place is amazing! They have one of two working Difference Engines (reconstructed, as Babbage never quite got it built) plus tons of old hardware that's fun to check out.
That's cool. I may have worked in former IBM buildings in Endicott that he might have worked in. I worked there a few summers in the early/mid 2000's when it was Endicott Interconnect Technologies. I loved exploring those old buildings, lots of tunnels, abandoned sections, old equipment. I wish I took photos.
Yes, yes, yes. This is a wonderful place. I visited it when it was just a shack on Moffett Field and now it's in the old SGI building.
If you are in the UK and can't make it to CA then a substitute is the National Museum of Computing: http://tnmoc.org/ It doesn't have the depth of the collection seen in Mountain View, but it does have some wonderful pieces. And the staff worked on the machines that are on display. Got the opportunity to show my SO core memory the other day.
The arc-shape building reminded me Apple Park in Cupertino, except TJ Watson center was built decades earlier.
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