Old Tech in Cambridge

March 30, 2025

Cambridge is well known for its technology and also it’s museums which are mostly scattered around the city centre. But there’s a couple of museums further out that are well worth a visit.

Centre for Computing History

Hidden away around the back of a small industrial park in the North East of Cambridge is an interactive exhibit of different types of computers and gaming systems.

https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/

The first room of the exhibit houses a world record breaking microprocessor. At over 10m long it is the largest functional microprocessor model in the world. The internal sections of the processor are broken out like a giant block diagram with blocks like adders, memory and input/output all clearly indicated with LEDs to show the states. And for those more more interested in gaming the model allows you to play Tetris.

The next area is a school room laid out with BBC Micros, robots and a giant traffic light. A great place to practice your programming.

The main gallery is a large divided room with set up with home computers with games installed. So a chance to try everything from pacman to lemmings. My family thought that the Wii Fit was the most fun.

Begin the main gallery are smaller galleries with historic computing devices as well as a 1970s office complete with acoustic coupler.

On the way out we visited the “tuck shop” for drinks and snacks and whilst we ate, we read about the latest tech in the provided books and magazines.

As you leave, naturally, you can exit through the gift shop

Cambridge Museum of Technology

Across the Newmarket road is a totally different kind of museum.

https://www.museumoftechnology.com/

The exhibits are housed in an old Victorian Sewage Pumping station and are mostly about pumping and steam engines.

And to keep those running is a workshop with a selection of old machine tools such as lathes and drills.

We had originally planned to visit the coffee bar and cafe outside, but due to traffic caused by a football match we were short of time by the time we arrived. But we still had time to visit the last exhibit of the museum which was totally unexpected.

The PYE Building

The last exhibit in the Cambridge Museum of Technology is effectively a stand-alone mini-museum. It showcases the history of the Pye Company.

The company started out in scientific equipment and then branched out into radios and then broadcast technology.

The company also were involved with wired telecommunications and built the worlds first electronic telephone exchange.

So even if steam is not your thing, then it is still worth visiting for this more high tech gallery.

By Andy from Workshopshed 2 Comments

  Posted in: Exhibition Tags: Cambridge, computing, Steam Engine