In Poland the computer - a symbol of the twenty first century - has an almost fifty-years long history. The year 2004 marked half a century from the building of the first Polish analogue computer, and the year 2008 will coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the construction of a Polish digital computer. For more than thirty years the Museum of Technology in Warsaw has been collecting and protecting monuments of electronic calculation technology - machines and assorted documentation (technical instructions, catalogues and advertisements). The most valuable exhibits in the Museum collections include the ZAM-21 computer, the Odra-1002, -1003 and -1013 machines, the MERA 7900 system and the Meritum micro-computer, equipment constructed by engineer Karpinski: AKAT-I, KAR-65, the K-202 mini-computer as well as a differential equation analyser. The collections also feature foreign computers (such as the American NCR 315, the National-Elliott computer set, external tape memory/CarouselI produced by the Swedish firm FACIT, the first IBM personal computers, Commodore and Atari, and the T3E super computer made by Cray). The exhibits are conserved by specialists from the Museum workshop which restores their original appearance and puts them into working order. An unprecedented dynamic growth of technology has made it urgent to examine the origin of the computer, computer techniques, and paths of development.
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