This website was created by Roger Broughton during, and after, his many years of employment at Newcastle University. Sadly, after a short period of serious illness Roger died on 18th December 2016. During the final weeks of 2016, a group of current and retired staff from the University began working with Roger to take custodianship of his computing collection, its database and this website. Now, in 2023, his database — and the Collection — have become available to the world through the creation of NUHC: the Newcastle University Historical Computing catalogue. If you are interested in knowing more about Roger and/or this museum, please do feel free to email us at comp-artefacts@ncl.ac.uk.
Over to Roger...
At Newcastle University we have a collection of computing artefacts
dating back to the Ferranti Pegasus in (1957-1963 6years),
and the English Electric KDF9 (1963-1974 9years).
But most date from when an IBM System 360 Model 67 Computer
was installed at the university. (1967-1984 17years)
Others are from the IBM System 370/168 (1975-1984 9years)
and last the Amdahl 5860 (1985-1992 7years).
Because there are a lot of photographs the modus operandi
is to present thumbnail size photos which when clicked on presents
a better size photograph, 600 pixel wide, and descriptive text.
Sometimes clicking on the 600 pixel photograph produces a fullsize one.
The fullsize photograph is typically 2500 pixels wide and will be bigger
than your screen. If you have a ⊕ cursor you can position it over
a point in the image you want to see magnified and left click the mouse button.
In the magnified image you will have a ⊖ cursor which when left clicked
will take you back. In this way you can explore the FULLSIZE image.
Alternatively you can use the scroll bars.
To escape from a fullsize view use the web browser ⇐ button.
We have ten showcases on view at the moment:
| Firmware - The programming between software and hardware. |
| Core Storage - Random Access Memory before chips. |
| I/O Media - Input to, and output from computers before keyboards and screens. |
| DASD - Direct Access Storage Devices, now known as Hard Drives. |
| Floppy Disks - Floppy disks were removeable disk drives. |
| Circuitry - Now known as mother boards and graphics cards. |
| Magnetic Tape - A storage media that predated disk storage. |
| Planning documents. - These paper documents have survived. |
| Network Diagrams - These paper documents have survived. |
| Microcomputers - took over from mainframes. |