About

About 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 August 2013. CCH was established as an educational charity to tell the story of the Information Age through exploring 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 education and events programmes.

Why?

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.

There is now a generation growing up who know very little about how this has all come to pass. The Centre for Computing History tells this story.

Education Services

CCH aims to deliver inspirational learning opportunities to a wide range of audiences – from pre-schoolers to the over-70s – so people become confident and creative users of information and digital technology. We offer a range of education services on site including programming and electronics workshops and other interactive learning using 1980s BBC Micros and Raspberry Pis for school students (all Key Stages) and the general public.

We also deliver training sessions to teachers to give them the knowledge, skills and confidence to teach computing to their students in an engaging way.

Collection

The fast-paced nature of the computing industry, along with its tendency to discard irrelevant technology as soon as it becomes outdated, means that the heritage around its origins and subsequent developments is at risk of being lost. CCH aims to preserve this fundamental part of our heritage and ensure it is valued, celebrated and secured for posterity.

CCH has an internationally significant collection of vintage computers, memorabilia, artefacts, documents and hands-on displays – in total about 24,000 items. The core collection consists of 800 historic computers including an Altair 8800, usually considered the first home computer, as well as mobile phones, games consoles and calculators. CCH is currently developing two new Cambridge-related archives: a Sinclair collection and an Acorn collection.

Funding and Management

The Centre for Computing History receives no government funding.