About the ACM Distinguished Service Award

Leonard Jay Shustek was named recipient of the ACM Distinguished Service Award for the establishment and success of the Computer History Museum, the world’s leading institution in exploring the history of computing and its impact on society.  Shustek has helped bring to the world the story of how the greatest innovation of our time has come to be. In 1995, after retiring from the network diagnostic company he co-founded, Shustek began teaching computer architecture at Stanford University. He soon realized that students were as interested in computer history as they were in computer architecture. Instead of returning to Stanford, he began a quest that would ultimately lead him to acquire a group of artifacts from The Computer Museum in Boston, with an eye toward forming a new computer history museum in the heart of Silicon Valley.

Today, thanks to the leadership, vision and tenacity of Shustek, the Computer History Museum (CHM) is acknowledged as the world’s most important museum chronicling the rise of computing and its impact on society. With a staff of 75 serving 200,000 visitors each year, CHM has realized Shustek’s founding goal of an organization that would be “built to last.” CHM is housed in a complex comprised of a 119,000-square-foot building for exhibits and hands-on labs; a 25,000-square-foot climate-controlled warehouse for papers and artifacts; and a new 50,000-square-foot research center for scholars and archival work. Throughout the museum’s growth and development, Shustek has engaged in a range of activities, from leading the museum in raising $125 million to tracking down vintage code related to operating systems no longer in use.

For the general public, signature exhibitions like “Revolution” translate the history of computing into an experience that the average person can not only appreciate, but enjoy. For the computing field, CHM’s role as the world’s major repository of artifacts and historic preservation allows innovators to access the past, in order to move into the future.

The ACM Distinguished Service Award is presented on the basis of value and degree of services to the computing community. The contribution should not be limited to service to the Association, but should include activities in other computer organizations and should emphasize contributions to the computing community at large.