Silicon City: New York's forgotten role in the history of computers

The exhibit is heavily influenced by the 1964 World's Fair, which was held in Queens and played a big role in the popularization of computers. "Before then, computing was something that was thought of as business, science, even defense and military," Stephen Edidin, the museum's chief curator, says. "What happened at the fair is that computers were allowed to be presented to everybody."

Much of this happened in what's known as "The Egg," IBM's dome-shaped pavilion at the fair. Visitors to the Silicon City exhibit begin their journey in a small-scale version of The Egg, where they can watch footage of those fair-goers experiencing computers for the first time.

After this, the exhibit really begins, transforming into a physical timeline of computing in New York. You could, honestly, move through the entire thing in less than 30 seconds. It's not massive by any means. But with more than 300 items, you'd be wise to take as much time as you can. Maybe you've never seen a 5 1/4 floppy disk before, or played Space Invaders on an original cabinet. Maybe you never saw the first transatlantic satellite broadcast, or the satellite that made it possible. Maybe you didn't even know these things existed.

These things and many more (some of which you can see in the photos below) are on display through April of 2016 at the museum, thanks in part to generous loans from partners like IBM and Google.org. In fact, Google is even offering free coding workshops and exhibition field trips to all New York City schools (as well as all "Tier 1" schools outside the city) in tandem with the Silicon City exhibit.

The story that the exhibit doesn't tell is why New York lost this proverbial computer war with California — a story that will hopefully someday warrant an exhibit all its own. But Silicon City tells the New York with extreme care and detail, and is certainly worth the $20 admission.