I can relate to some of these comments.
Cisco, where I have employed since 1997, used to have coolers with a large variety of free beverages available to all employees. I had one friend that said that when the free drinks went away, so would he, and he did leave not so long after the free drinks disappeared.
I also used to fill my cup directly from the outflow from the old style brewing machines.
At one point Encore Computer, charged employees a quarter a cup for coffee on the honor system. Eventually the coffee became free to employees, but management didn’t tell us and they used the funds to sponsor a year end holiday party.
Here is a story. More than 15 years ago, I fairly frequently travelled back and forth between Boston and San Jose on the “Nerd Bird." Over time, I had established the habit of staying on east coast time, even when out in California. Visiting San Jose, during the intense effort of a new hardware bring up, the team stayed and worked through a weekend. Sunday morning, I woke up, as usual, about 4 or 5 AM local time. Not having anything to do in the hotel room, I decided to go into the office and get a head start on the days efforts. I arrived in the large, dark and apparently empty, office building at something like 5 AM that Sunday morning. With the lights out, no one in sight, I found that the coffee machine was in the middle of brewing a fresh pot of coffee. It was a very eerie thing. Eventually, I ran across a guy from another team that had come into the office early that morning and needed his cup of “Joe.”
Eventually I had to give up on all caffeinated beverages, as I often didn’t drink them during weekends and would then end up with a splitting headache on Sunday.
Mugs are also well represented in our collection at the Computer History Museum… you’ll get 470 hits when you search on
“mug” in our online catalog. In fact we have essentially stopped collecting them as a result.
We also have a
Peet’s Dash Button.
Best, Marc
Curatorial Director, Internet History Program
Computer History Museum, 1401 N Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View CA 94043
Hi Jim,
You might want to browse through the Doug Menuez photography collection at Stanford. About 10,000 of the images are online (out of about 200-250,000). He captures quite a bit of the culture in companies like Apple, NeXT, Adobe, etc., mostly 1980s. I am sure you will find many coffee mugs there!
Here is a link to the online exhibit created from the images in this collection:
Hit “browse” to see a selection of companies represented.
Henry
Henry Lowood, PhD
Harold C. Hohbach Curator, History of Science & Technology Collections; Curator, Film & Media Collections
HASG, Green Library, 557 Escondido Mall
Stanford University Libraries
Stanford CA 94305-6066
PH: 650-723-4602
I would add to Alana's fine list:
External Email - Exercise Caution
The National Museum of American History has some mugs in the computing collection featuring company names. Some include fun little sayings. See links below for a few examples. I'm not sure I can elaborate on coffee culture though! We are still working remotely but if you have specific questions about any of these or other objects I'd be happy to do whatever digging I can do from afar, for the time being.
Alana Staiti (she/her/hers)
Curator of the History of Computers and Information Sciences
National Museum of American History
Smithsonian Institution
External Email - Exercise Caution
The IT community of users, programmers, vendors, etc have for decades had a reputation for being extensive consumers of coffee. In some parts of the IT ecosystem, especially among those who work odd hours, such as programmers, computer operators, and vendor field engineers. I am studying the corporate ephemera of this industry and its cultural attachments, such as coffee cups and what they tell us about computing. Do any of you have any information, ephemera, or sources and citations on this specific issue of coffee and computing? I can get many industry folks, such as IBM retirees, to wax eloquently on the subject in their private FB accounts, but that is not enough. Corporate culture is tough to study. Thanks in advance for your help. Jim
--
Charles Babbage Institute
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Internet History Program Curatorial Director, Computer History Museum