The world's oldest intact computer is turning 60.

The CSIRAC - Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research organisation Automatic Computer - is housed in the state's museum and has today been granted heritage listing as part of its birthday celebrations.

It is the first computer ever to be made in Australia; the fourth computer ever to be made in the world; and the only first generation computer that remains intact.

Museum Victoria's senior curator of information and communication, David Demant, describes himself as the computer's caretaker.

He says the CSIRAC represents the beginning of the modern computer age.

"It is one of the first computers that started the digital technology revolution, which has completely changed the planet," he said.

"The potential of what is happening today was in CSIRAC... you couldn't do the same things back then because it didn't have the power or the memory or whatever, but essentially in principle the structure of computers has remained the same since CSIRAC."

Mr Demant says the computer can be explained simply as the first iPod.

"You could say that CSIRAC was the first iPod if you like... you would feed in your paper tape and CSIRAC played the music," he said.

"And today you have a little chip in which you record your music, you put your recorded music onto the iPod, and the iPod - which is basically a computer - plays your music."

The CSIRAC was designed from scratch and hand built in 1949. It was run off paper tape, which Mr Demant says probably now constitutes the worlds oldest software library.

"It consisted of nine cabinets, which are about seven foot high and very wide, and there was a console and the computer was driven," he said.

"It wasn't automatic like we know today, you actually had to intervene every now and then in running a program and it ran off paper tape... so its output was paper tape and there was no screen as such."

Earliest computer games

The CSIRAC was used for a range of scientific and industrial purposes including crystallography, electronics, building frame analysis, loan repayments and weather forecasting.

In 1951 it generated the world's first computer music and it could also host games.

"People were trying to explore its capabilities and they tested everything," Mr Demant said.

"In one of the games there was a string of lights on one of the cabinets and the computer had to predict your next move.

"So if you moved the light to the left and the computer predicted that you were going to do that it would shift the light to the left, but if it had failed to predict you it would move the light to the right.

"They were very simple games, but nevertheless they were games."

Mr Demant says Australia's first generation of software programmers were trained on the CSIRAC.

"It was the training ground for computer software programmers in Australia," he said.

"It was the beginning of the Australian software computer industry because it wasn't just a hardware computer, it produced software as well."

Heritage Victoria's director of collections, Elizabeth Triarico, says the CSIRAC is significant historically, scientifically and technologically.

"It is the first technology object to be put on our state register which is quite a significant thing in itself," she said.

"It is something of very high significance to Australia and not just Victoria."