Waterloo Computer Museum Hardware Installation

As part of the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science’s 50^th anniversary celebrations, the Waterloo Computer Museum has assembled a display of retired hardware in MC 3011. 

You’ll see everything from an enormous slide rule, early core memory and disk drive storage devices to IBM mainframe consoles to the Commodore SuperPET, early laptops and desktop computers. 

People who weren’t around during the early years of computer science at Waterloo can explore — using virtual reality and a 3D reconstruction — the famous Red Room, home of the IBM 360 Model 75, the largest and most powerful computer in Canada at the time.*

The Waterloo Computer Museum is open daily from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. until July 14, 2017. 

The exhibit is free. Visitors are welcome to drop in to see and experience treasures from Waterloo’s computing history.

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* In 1967, the University of Waterloo had the distinction of being home to the most powerful computer in Canada. Known as the IBM 360 Model 75, this mainframe device had 1,024 kilobytes of memory and could perform up to 960 thousand instructions per second. 

Fast forward 50 years and Waterloo has that distinction once again! On May 5, 2017, the University of Waterloo, unveiled the largest supercomputer at any Canadian university. 

Named Graham, after James Wesley (Wes) Graham, a Canadian pioneer in the computing industry, the supercomputer can handle more simultaneous computational jobs than any other academic supercomputer in Canada. 

Graham has 33,000 CPUs, weighs 16 tonnes and uses 650 kilowatts of power. With its extraordinary computing power and a storage system of more than 50 petabytes —50 million gigabytes — Graham can support researchers who are collecting, analyzing and sharing immense volumes of data.