Google Corkboard Server, made by King Star Computers Inc, California, United States, 1999.

This server was an essential component of Google’s first search engine. The search engine Google started life as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin who met at Stanford University in California. A server responds to requests within a computer network. In 1998 the young company made do with inexpensive materials including off the shelf personal computers and thin sheets of corkboard for insulation. As the company expanded more sophisticated servers were built and housed in enormous data centres.