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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 1141 - 1150) 1229 items
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Teaching Photograph - Pointer Operation Diagram, Harvard Mk 1, Trevor Pearcey, 1959-1992
Photograph of a diagram entitled "Fig Fig 44. Basic principle of the automatic sequence controlled calculator". Diagram shows pointer operation on the Harvard Mark 1 Calculator, an ele ...
From: Melbourne, Australia Images: 0 -
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Teaching Photograph - Layout Diagram, Bell Balistic Calculator, Trevor Pearcey, 1959-1992
Photograph of a diagram entitled "Block layout of circuits of the ballistic computer". Diagram shows the layout of the Bell Ballistic Calculator, which was produced by Bell Laboratories ...
From: Melbourne, Australia Images: 0 -
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Teaching Photograph - Component Layout Diagram, LEO 1 Computer, Trevor Pearcey, 1959-1992
Photograph of a computer diagram entitled "ALL HARD VALVE LOGIC + GERMANIUM DIODES". Diagram shows the layout of components in a LEO 1 computer. The LEO (Lyons Electronic Office) compu ...
From: Melbourne, Australia Images: 0 -
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Teaching Photograph - Input/Output Logic Diagram, LEO 1 Computer, Trevor Pearcey, 1959-199 ...
Photograph of a computer diagram entitled "LEO 1 logic from [illegible] I/O (initial)". Diagram shows the logic of input and output in a LEO 1 computer. The LEO (Lyons Electronic Office ...
From: Melbourne, Australia Images: 0 -
Negative - 'The Post Office', Isisford, Queensland, circa 1920
The Biggest Family Album of Australia, Museum Victoria
From: Isisford, Australia Images: 1 -
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Photograph - Pearcey, Modifications of Instructions Diagram, Pegasus Computer, 1959-1992
Photograph of a computer diagram entitled "PEGASUS ORDER MODIFICATIONS". Diagram shows the instruction modification for the Pegasus computer, an early vacuum tube computer built by Ferr ...
From: Melbourne, Australia Images: 0 -
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Teaching Photograph - Subroutine Listing Diagram, Assembler Language, Trevor Pearcey, 1959 ...
Photograph of a computer programming diagram showing a listing of a computer subroutine, possibly written in Assembler language, with the title "TAC - BCD TO BINARY". This is one of a ...
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Teaching Photograph - Data Paths Diagram, Harvard Mk III, Trevor Pearcey, 1959-1992
Photograph of a diagram entitled "INPUT OUTPUT MECHANISMS". Diagram shows the data paths for the Harvard Mark III device, also known as ADEC (for Aiken Dahlgren Electronic Calculator). ...
From: Melbourne, Australia Images: 0 -
Negative - CSIRAC, Night Shift, 1958
This is part of a collection of items relating to CSIRAC containing drawings, photographs, documents, paper tapes and computer hardware.
From: Melbourne, Australia Images: 1 -
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Teaching Photograph - Schematic Layout Diagram, ERA 1101 Computer, Trevor Pearcey, 1959-19 ...
Photograph of a computer diagram entitled "Schematic layout of ERA 1101". Diagram refers to the ERA 1101, later known as the UNIVAC 1101, a computer designed by Engineering Research Ass ...
From: Melbourne, Australia Images: 0
