The Computer Museum of America reclamation project(computer-museum.org) |
The Computer Museum of America reclamation project(computer-museum.org) |
Like Boston used to have a great computer museum in the 1980s back when Boston had a computer industry. I guess though it is hard to keep a PDP-10 alive today and it's not impressive to kids today to play LUNAR LANDER on a VT-102.
A lot of very nice computer collections are parts of bigger ones in larger, less specialised, museums.
It’s rare for museums to keep artefacts operational. The ones that still work are usually treated as the big attraction because they demand attention and maintenance.
I was recently in Bletchley Park, where I saw a partially working Bombe (they only run it partially because of the wear), and their smaller computer museum (there are a lot of machines that are available for visitors to play with) and the one in Cambridge, which has classrooms with BBC micros, as well as many other interesting machines - Suns, SGIs, Amigas, Ataris, Spectrums, and even a Lisa, which had a boot issue.
I have to say the kids in the last two seemed thrilled to play Lemmings on Amigas and Archimedes machines. Not a PDP-1, but still cool.
The Living Computer Museum tried until the money ran out. Here's the auction list from when the Living Computer Museum was liquidated.[1]
[1] https://onlineonly.christies.com/s/firsts-history-computing-...
Rhode Island Computer Museum https://www.ricomputermuseum.org/Home
Quasi-related: If you're into old telephone switching equipment (some of which is computer-based), the Connections Museum in Seattle is not to be missed.
Their YouTube channel:
Anyway, it's clearly a labor of love. They have some very cool artifacts from the space program (e.g. a some of the Space Shuttle and Apollo main computers). And a large fraction of the floor space is devoted to a new, very comprehensive exhibit on the history of Apple, with just about every product they ever made plus some internal prototypes.
This research program is being underwritten by an anonymous donor, and will continue into the summer."
Wow... undoubtedly much stuff that's been collecting dust for decades, and they haven't even taken inventory of what's there? Or (assuming the effort described above went ahead) no result posted on the website.
Dsigned by Ty Warner, of course) the experience will live with me as long as I live and can instill in younger people that pioneer spirit (perhaps with SBC's and real-world interfaces) and fun times growing up with these gizmos.
I don't see them as museum pieces to be hung on a wall, and guarded. What good does that do in the tech world as opposed to the art world? I recall hearing about the greatest art theft of all time, IIRC, the one at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. [0]
I previously visited that museum, at a time when passive photography was considered harmful (probably a holdover from the Salem Witchcraft Trials, and thoroughly debunked) and got a raft of shit from a curator about having evil photographic gear in my possession.
Since I never knew his name I never thought to look up whether he was one of the guards bound and gagged in the robbery.
More to the point, "treasures" ( and these are treasures) are for fools to hoard, and you can learn from mere observation, whereas the old gizmos are still "playable"
In fact, a few frayed ribbon cables still need replacement.
UNLESS WE HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO DO SO.
Claude refused to.
[0] https://www.fbi.gov/history/cases-and-criminals/isabella-ste...
That’s sad. Maybe other museums would be more enlightened. In the end, unless the museum is well funded by a government grant or something similar, it’ll need to recover costs from tickets, and prestige items are something they can advertise to the muggles.
Keeping these machines running is hard work and, for the most part, unpredictable - they will go down and need maintenance from time to time. These is a constant tension between keeping it operational and keeping it original, as tools, materials, parts, and techniques become unavailable, and replacing parts with modern equivalents is a last resort.
I often wish I had the woodworking chops to build a guitar myself, I have a very specific idea of what I want from a guitar.
Their "computer crypt" is something to behold, too.
The museum on the afternoon we visited was nearly empty. As a result, the museum docents were happy to let us monopolize their time. I mentioned offhandedly that I had always wished I could try programming SmallTalk on an Alto, and the docent said with a grin “sure!” He reloaded their Alto with a programming environment and gave me a short tutorial. I quickly crashed the machine, but I had a lot of fun along the way.
I got to try many other machines that night. I often think with sadness about how my students will no longer be able to easily have this experience.
And didn't do any of the obvious things one might have done if they wanted to preserve the museum's existence, like finding a buyer or starting a foundation. She did the easy thing and scrapped it for parts.
(IIRC she was the executor of his will, trustee of his estate, and the CEO of the company he left most everything to, so she had all the agency she needed to do something responsible with the museum)
Who is buying these things? Private collectors?
So SV always had a community of very wealthy nerds who could afford a used PDP-10 and its insane running and maintenance costs.
But... the community was always very small.
And today, the number of people with that kind of money and a similar nostalgic attachment to increasingly remote history is even smaller.
It is only an investment if it (likely) gains yield. Otherwise it is just a means of preservation of value.
This is is the area I focused on. I'm now at point where I would rather shed objects than collect them. I will probably hold on to the rarest handmade objects. The mass produced from the late 70's to the early 2000's I would like to get rid of.