American Computer Museum

The American Computer Museum traces the history of computing from ancient counting devices through to the early personal computer era. The collection includes ancient counting tools, mechanical calculators, early mainframes, and personal computers from the 1970s and 1980s, with working demonstrations of some of the early machines.

The museum is small and volunteer-run, but genuinely worthwhile for anyone interested in the history of technology. Interactive exhibits let visitors try operating some of the early systems. The context it provides — showing how a Babylonian clay tablet and an Apple II are solving the same fundamental human problem — is unusual and illuminating.

Located on the west side of Bozeman, open year-round from Tuesday to Saturday. Admission is very affordable. Allow about an hour.

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A story
The museum's founders began collecting computing artifacts in Bozeman in the 1980s, and the collection now spans 4,000 years of human information-processing history — from Babylonian clay tablets and the abacus through to early microcomputers. It holds one of the largest collections of computing history artifacts outside the Smithsonian.