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Information & Communication Collection

Image: Grid of lights on CSIRAC

Source: Museum Victoria

Soon after its creation in 1870, the Industrial & Technological Museum began to conduct classes in telegraphy, to train young men and women for jobs in the rapidly expanding industry. Ever since, the presentation of contemporary and historical examples of communication technologies has been a priority of the museum.

Close relationships with government agencies, universities and local industries have resulted in the development of a collection that reflects many of the major changes in information and communication technology throughout the 20th century.

With key items such as the CSIRAC computer and Alexander Graham Bell's experimental telephone, this collection is of both national and international significance. It includes items of phonography, television, computing, radio, telephony, telegraphy, electronics, photography and cinematography.

Significant items

CSIRAC (1949-64): the first automatic electronic stored-program computer in Australia and one of the first in the world. It is the only first-generation computer still in existence.
Mainframe computers, including IBM CDC3200 (1960s), Cray Supercomputer X-MP (early 1980s).
Microcomputers and microprocessor chips, from the 1970s to present.
Noughts and Crosses machine: an early example of an interactive display using diodes, relays and uniselectors.
Early calculating devices, from Napier's rods to arithmometers and totalisators.
Domestic communication technologies: telephones, phonographs, radios, televisions, including items of considerable historic interest, including one of the first Edison phonographs in Australia.
Pioneering items in the history of radio in Australia: Jenvey Coherer (1901), Max Howden receiver, Flying Doctor equipment, ABC station 3LO's Studio 303 (1939-86).
19th century telegraphic equipment and early telephonic equipment, including Alexander Graham Bell's experimental telephone equipment (1876), early Melbourne telephone exchange switchboard.
Baird Mirror Television (1937), probably the first cathode-ray tube television in the Southern Hemisphere; experimental spinning disc television relics developed by Gil Miles in the 1920s.
Fawkner Press, used to print the first newspaper in Victoria in 1838.
Printing presses from the Victorian Government Printer, mid-19th century to the 1960s.
Paris Universal Exposition, 1867, Reports of the United States Commissioners, Examination of the Telegraphic Apparatus and the Processes in Telegraphy by Samuel Morse. The title page carries the underlined handwritten inscription 'With the author's compliments', presumably in Morse's handwriting.
Comprehensive set of technical and office items and images collected from the Melbourne Radio Coastal Station, (opened 1912, closed 2003), including an audio copy of the last official morse code radio transmission in Australia, sent 1 February 1999.

Items per page: 10 50 (showing 91 - 100) 4405 items

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Lamp - h.nu, Type 10.2 eV, Unknown Date

This item is a lamp, probably used for spectroscopic purposes using a wavelength corresponding to 10.2 eV. This corresponds to a wavelength of 121.6 nm, an ultraviolet wavelength in the ...

Images: 0
Computer System - Microbee 'Computer in a Book', 64Kb, circa 1980

Computer system consisting of a CPU with 64 kb of RAM, inbuilt into the keyboard, a tape deck for data storage, a 3.5 inch disk drive (called a "computer-in-a-book"), a modem with telep ...

Images: 45
Personal Computer - Applied Technology, Microbee 256T, circa 1987

An upgraded computer system from Microbee, which had 256 kb of RAM and twin 3.5 inch disk drives. Several hundred thousand Microbees were made in the 1980s and sold to users all over A ...

Images: 7
Portable Radio - Sanyo, circa 1950s

Alternative Name(s): Wireless, Transistor Radio Portable radio made by Sanyo, and used by the Dereani family, circa 1957. Georgia Dereani, her husband and infant son immigrated to Aust ...

Images: 2
Radio - Phillips, circa 1950s

Alternative Name(s): Mantle Radio Radio made by Phillips, it was purchased by the Dereani family in Trieste, Italy circa 1950s. Georgia Dereani, her husband and infant son immigrated t ...

Images: 6
Set of Records - Linguaphone, English Course, circa 1950s

English Language course produced by Linguaphone, circa 1950s. Linguaphone is a British-based language course which distributes internationally. The course was purchased by the Vyverberg ...

Images: 4
Journal - Amateur Radio, Oct 1987

'Amateur Radio - Journal of the Wireless Institute of Australia', Vol. 55, No. 10, October 1987.

Images: 1
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Compact Disk & Cassette - Last Morse Code Message, Melbourne Coastal Radio Station, Compac ...

Compact disc containing a copy of the last morse code message from the Melbourne Coastal Radio Station, Cape Schanck, Victoria, on 1 February 1999. It was collected from the Melbourne C ...

Images: 0
Slide - Main Distribution Frame, Melbourne Coastal Radio Station, Cape Schanck, Victoria, ...

Photographic colour slide of the main distribution frame, Melbourne Coastal Radio Station, Cape Schanck, Victoria. This image is one of a series taken at the Melbourne Radio Station at ...

Images: 1
Slide - Console, Radio Telephone, Melbourne Coastal Radio Station, Cape Schanck, Victoria, ...

Photographic colour slide of the Radphone console for radio telephone communication, Melbourne Coastal Radio Station, Cape Schanck, Victoria. This image is one of a series taken at th ...

Images: 1