The Hall of Computing gallery, comprising of 40 interactive, models and computer based exhibits, was inaugurated by Shri Ajay Bhushan Pandey, Secretary, Information Technology, Govt of Maharashtra on Feb 28, 2009 at Nehru Science Centre, Mumbai. The gallery provides a glimpse of the phenomenal growth of computing world and an opportunity to explore the world of computing from beginning to modern computers with an eye on future of computing.

The notion of computing and its history is older by several centuries than that of computers. Computing has been a primary activity for all civilizations. In the prehistoric time, people counted on their fingers, scratching marks on bones or using stones. Early civilizations had developed sophisticated numbering systems to keep track of commercial transactions, astronomical cycles etc. Manual calculating tools appeared on the scene a few millennia later.

Today, the sophisticated computers perform computations of prodigious complexity and jobs apparently unrelated to numbers. In modern era, we don’t find any parallel of computer machine that has changed the world so drastically and so thoroughly. The revolution of computation started with Abacus. Logarithmic Tables, Slide rule, Napier Bones/rods, Pascal’s calculator changed the computing world. Interestingly, initial advancement in computing had nothing much to do with numbers.

In the modern times computers have become an essential and inevitable part of our life. It has innumerous applications expanding much beyond calculating numbers and more into non-computing world.