The Computer Age is an informational brochure providing a short, but concise, story of the evolution of IBM computers from 1951 to 1976 (the year of publication). The entire booklet is available in PDF format from the Computer History Museum and can be found here. While it is an interesting introduction on how we got from there to here – from the huge and incredibly expensive vacuum tube mini-minds, to the less expensive, smaller, faster, and smarter personal computers of the time – there is something else that stands out.
The ‘special-effects’ photography of Mitchell Funk is fab. Below are three of his images from the booklet. IBM must have been immensely pleased by Funk’s ability to show their computer components as wonderful works of art.
A glistening array of IBM vacuum tubes.
A row of transistors appear to be marching in front of rainbow-ed wiring.
This curious and haunting image suggesting the ‘ghosts in the machine’.
Pretty good stuffs.
A h/t to Luis Cesar at Facebook for the inspiration.
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