A computer museum near you is closing soon

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ISSUE 20.28 • 2023-07-10 PUBLIC DEFENDER By Brian Livingston You certainly remember your first boyfriend or girlfriend. You might also remember your f
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Steve S., fisher75, abbodi86, DLivesInTexas, geekdom, Chris Greaves, Ascaris

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Brian, the article alone was good, but the link to the worldwide list of museums was excellent. Thank you for that!

I did not expect to find a list of museums in Newfoundland, and was not disappointed (grin!), but I was delighted to find a spread across Canada.

I like to brag: I was a catalyst in getting an IBM 1401 sent from Toronto to the museum of technology in Ottawa around 1984/85. The message is this: even humble computer programmers can exert enough pressure to convince middle-level management to apply pressure on IBM to cough up the cash for transport of equipment.

That is, you don’t have to own a computer system to be able to get it into a museum facility.

Thanks again, Chris

Unless you're in a hurry, just wait.

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Evening something as significant as the automobile couldn’t stand alone as a museum without the continual support of the auto manufacturers. If they want the computer to be recognized as culturally significant than the manufacturers are going to have to support the museums.

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I wanted to collect older PC history (older being relative, but I’m an elder geek by many’s definition these days) and I had to think -what did many computer companies have that could be a consistent type of memorabilia across decades?

The answer came to me looking through eBay: lapel pins.  From the mainframe era and longer, into the 90s and early 2000s, many companies had lapel pins.  So far, I have the following:

Data General

Siemens Nixdorf

Remington-UNIVAC

Cray Research

HoneyWell (tie tack)

NCR

Philips PC

NeXT

U.S. Robotics

Aldus (Pagemaker and PhotoStyler software)

WordPerfect (v6 for DOS)

Commodore/Amiga

IBM (ThinkPad era)

Sun Microsystems

SGI (Silicon Graphics)

Zenith Data Systems

Seagate (rare HDD-pin I got from Bulgaria)

Atari

Toshiba

AMD

Microsoft (Excel early 90’s and Windows 3.1)

IBM PC DOS 5.0

Wang

Keydata

AT&T Networks

ATI Technologies

Kaypro

IBM PowerPC

Texas Instruments

Apple (Mac Classic)

Novell Netware

Banyan VINES

IBM OS/2

Intel

Hewlett Packard

Digital Equipment Coroporation

Borland (dBase and Quattro Pro)

Compaq

AST

Scalable Linux Systems (had to have Tux)

I have an Osborne sticker; couldn’t find a pin from the era. I just like keeping them as a remembrance of a time when technology seemed like a true frontier. There was so much going on. I miss my early days of tech far more than I enjoy the current ones.

We are SysAdmins.
We walk in the wiring closets no others will enter.
We stand on the bridge, and no malware may pass.
We engage in support, we do not retreat.
We live for the LAN.
We die for the LAN.

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In my view, Linotype is responsible for the democratisation of knowledge.   There is a fascinating documentary about the Linotype called, “Linotype the Film: In Search of the Eighth Wonder of the World”.  Highly recommend.

etaoin shrdlu

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My wife and I stumbled upon the American Computer museum in Boseman, Montana over 15 years ago while on a road trip. No doubt it has changed over the years but I remember it was facinating! At the time, I recall they had a recreation of the first working transistor experiment at Bell Labs, a Babbage machine of some type, IBM mainframe equipment, original Intel optical masks used in manufacture of the 8086 processor, an early prototype Apple board signed by Steve Wozniak, lots of early PCs and much much more. They’re still open. https://acrmuseum.org/#home-section

“Inch for inch, the best museum in the world.”
– Dr. Edward O. Wilson,
Professor Emeritus, Harvard

Win10 Pro x64 22H2, Win10 Home 22H2, Linux Mint + a cat with 'tortitude'.

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The best way for museums to survive is for the readers of AskWoody to make a commitment to support their favorite institution by encouraging friends and family to visit as well as becoming active fundraisers for the organizations.

A museum and its collections only have value if someone uses them.

But then again, a museum’s collections will survive – only their locations will change.  In many instance items donated to a museum were given to the organization with contractual restrictions on their distribution if the organization is dissolved.

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