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Are computer museums 'bad'?

In the UK we have at least two computer museums (that I personally know of) where a substantial proportion of the exhibits are out, switched on and and available for the public to tinker with, these being the Centre For Computing History (Cambridge) and the North West Computer Museum (Leigh, Near Manchester). When I visit these museums I can only admire the bravery of the people who run them because my instinct, especially with the older or rarer systems, is first to keep them from harm - because, of course, I have the rather narrow idea in my head that only I can be trusted to treat them respectfully and carefully and the rest of the human race will only damage them if they are allowed near them.

I know of course that that is a wild exaggeration but museums with an open access policy must have deep boxes full of spares, especially joysticks, keyboard keys and casing parts, to be able to continue this policy for very long. I admire the courage of anyone who seeks to run a computer museum in that way.

I have at least one machine which I suppose I will have to let go when I am eventually about to be carted off into a nursing home but I would be reluctant to let it go to a museum who might box it and never even display it, or sell it to raise funds. I would rather hand it to a single individual who I know is interested enough in it to use it and play with it.
 
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ScanDisk said:
I've visited Syd Bolton's (R.I.P) "Personal Computer Museum" in Brantford, Ontario.

There were many system setup and working, and we were allowed to use them too, also they kept them in working order and do repairs and such. I think something like that, would be a good thing, both from an education perspective and a "keep them working" perspective.

If it's just some system in a glass display case, that's just a waste.
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I do regret never getting to see that place. I would have liked to have attended one of the open house things he put on. He claimed to have the largest collection in Canada, although I think he had many multiples of machines like the C64.

I still can't quite believe he's gone - he was only a couple of years older than I am. And of course his passing highlights one of the risks with smaller private museums - if the owner is gone, often the museum vanishes with them.
 
People who have a major web presence highlighting their museum collection probably have people waiting for them to kick the bucket and then descend on the collection, so it's mostly saved. Its people who hoard and don't list all their stuff have their stuff recycled when they die since nobody knows about it.

Nobody lives forever and even the richest people have little power to keep collections intact once they are dead.
 
I am a volunteer and on the board of directors of the Rhode Island Computer Museum. At the beginning the primary goal of the RICM was preservation/conservation. There was a lot of interesting equipment going to scrap that needed to be preserved. Much of this equipment is far too large for, or not of interest to a personal collector, so a museum made a home for it. The RICM has 5,000 sq/ft warehouse space where much of the collection is stored, and is available for tours. We have a limited staff and budget, so we pick items that are interesting, unique, representative, and those items go into the 1,800 sq/ft display and lab space. We spend lots of time and money getting machines running and keeping them running so you can interact with them. Most everything in the display space runs, and we let you play with it. We depend on our volunteers for restoration work because we have no paid staff. Nothing at the RICM is behind glass. Punching and reading paper tapes on Teletypes is a big hit, but these fragile machines often get abused by visitors and I have to fix them. The small machines from the 1980s and 1990s are very popular, as is playing SpaceWar! on a DEC PDP-12. We also have some interesting newer PCs like an HP Sprout and a zSpace that are fun to play with.
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The big problem running a computer museum is funding. The amount of money collected from visitors covers just a small percentage of the operational costs. We rely on generous donors, and preservation and educational grants to cover the rest. Like most computer museums, we have found branching out into STEM and STEAM makes the museum interesting to a broader population, and right now there is a lot of grant money available for these areas.
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The RICM, like most museums, is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, so you can take a tax deduction for your equipment or cash donations. The RICM works closely with other computer museums. We swap items that other museums need, or that we need. We preserve items that other museums are not interested in or don't have the space for. We send items to other museums that have conservation skills that we don't have, or if we have duplicates of something they would like to have. We also have a plan to distribute our collection if we have a financial disaster.
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Museums have their place, but so do private collectors. Corporations that are unloading machines, especially large ones, are unlikely to give them to an individual collector so they go to museums. The RICM doesn't need to keep lots of duplicate systems in our collection. There are plenty of private collectors who will restore and take care of them, so . The private collector community is often a source or parts, information, documentation, software, and help for the RICM, because we can't do everything.
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Next time you are in our area come for a visit and ask for a warehouse tour.
 
I've got to have a little vent on this museums thread.
I've had a foreign computer museum tell me to send them equipment that cost me time, time off work, interstate recovery costs, and effort to recover.
No cordial "We'd really appreciate what you've found, can we negotiate some arrangement?"-type dialogue, just "Send it to us". Twice.

I have no idea why I was treated like that, if someone has something I would like then I politely ask them if I could buy or swap for it, it's the least I would do.
When I said I would consider swapping for some other equipment, they got their nose out of joint and that's where the conversation ended. No contrition forthcoming.
I checked that museum's constitution and it stated they do at times allocate money to spend on things.
My feeling is perhaps they are just so used to being gifted items from benefactors (with domestic tax write-offs, useless for me) they assume everyone must be like that.

I have to say it really left a bad feeling with me, and when I look at that equipment taking space in my shed, I just put it out of my mind.
I'd perhaps still like to swap it for some other gear someday, but that's the lowest of priorities.
It's of no use or value to the machines in my collection, save the back plane single-sided card connectors which could conceivably be cut into half-pieces and reassembled to be double-sided connectors (which I could use), but I don't think I could bring myself to do that.
Sorry if this annoys anyone, I think about it at times and for all I know maybe I'm in the wrong here.
 
The only computer museum I've been to is the National Museum of Computing in the UK, at Bletchley Park. Although they do have warehoused hardware the emphasis is on restoring hardware to full function. Where feasible the public is allowed to use it - for example they have a lab full of BBC micros that you can enjoy. There are classes and labs offered with the vintage machines. Some of the machines are demonstrated by expert volunteers, such as the replica Collossus, the replica of Turing's Bombe and the Harwell Decatron (although I was given the opportunity to trigger a program execution on the Harwell machine), and direct interaction is not typically allowed. I was frankly in awe of the array of machines that they have restored, and delighted to see it all up close. First time I ever saw core memory in person. Truly an amazing place and highly recommended. I'm going back next year.
 
pkhoury said:
You bring up a good point. I acquired a substantial amount of inventory from what was left of the Houston Computer Museum. Some of it I bought, and a lot of it I got cheap or for free from the last custodian of the warehouse; he researched a lot of the things there, but he's in it primarily for the money, rather than collecting (I make my living selling a lot of that stuff, but I don't believe in gouging people, either). That place had all kinds of amazing things - a Cray, Suns, HPs, DEC galore, IBM galore, you name it. In the end, the stuff I didn't get went to the San Antonio computer museum (I think they go by SAMSAT), and it's semi-private, and I presume a lot of stuff they got won't be open to the public, either.

I did acquire at least a pallet's worth of IBM mainframe documentation and I have no idea where I want it to go, where it can be archived/visible by all. I definitely don't want to sell it, lest it go to a private collector and nobody sees it again.
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Ugh, wish I’d known about this sale. So little vintage computer stuff in Houston compared to Dallas.
 
There are a few museums appearing all across the UK where people can actually 'use' the equipment (unless it is really 'expensive').

TNMoC at Bletchly, Cambridge, Swindon, Leicester, the Northwest Computer Museum at Leigh etc. to name but a few.

The Science Museum in London has "pulled the plug" on live demonstrations in favour of static displays.

Come for a tour of the UK and visit the various computer museums along the way...

Dave
 
I hate to think of it so soon, since I'm so "young" by comparison to most people in this hobby, but my collection is mostly considered worthless, and so I'll likely either take it to my grave or it will all be recycled. I wonder if anyone in another 50 years will even remember the mechanical hard disk drive, let alone some of the weird offbrand drives I have in my collection. By that point, it wouldn't be too out of the question for most living memory of those names to have passed on as well.

Something something "you die for real the last time someone remembers your name." As much as I'd love to hand it all off to a museum, not many of my pieces feel worthy of the treatment, nor do I expect any of them to ever be displayed. *Maybe* my NOS Seagate ST-506, but I would think most museums already have one of those.

It's such a shame that I'll never get to visit some of these museums. I always thought I had more time with the LCM, or Houston Computer Museum.
 
daver2 said:
There are a few museums appearing all across the UK where people can actually 'use' the equipment (unless it is really 'expensive').

TNMoC at Bletchly, Cambridge, Swindon, Leicester, the Northwest Computer Museum at Leigh etc. to name but a few.

The Science Museum in London has "pulled the plug" on live demonstrations in favour of static displays.

Come for a tour of the UK and visit the various computer museums along the way...

Dave
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We still do live demonstrations of the Manchester Baby Replica at the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester, part of the Science Museum Group. Not sure for how long though...
 
That seems like such low-hanging fruit: A plotter, if it's maintainable, screams "Park it in front of the gift shop!"

You pay a couple dollars/pounds and select a design, then you get to watch the plotter draw it line by line. It's an obvious discussion point to "this is a lot like how a 3D printer or CNC mill works, sliding a head across multiple axes". If you configured the plotter to draw on a blank postcard, you then have a niced souvenir to send to your friends instead of the usual pictures of seaside villages and old steam trains (or maybe that's just what my relatives send).
 
My big problem with "museums" is the concept that it's well funded and going to be around has been proven wrong.... several times shall we say.

And I hate having to go and lug systems around AGAIN out of the eventual dumpster. Speaking of which, what's up with LCM these days? Do I really need to get up there and rescue AI *AGAIN*?

CZ
 
falter said:
I've thought about this on and off. As I see it, the (perceived) pros of sending stuff to a museum are:

- Security: it'll have a stable, well funded home and not be lost to recycling or such.
- Accessibility: more people will see it
- Research: it'll be available for research purpose
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Honestly, I think you are being overly optimistic with the "pros" ....
I have visited many a computer museum, and it appears to me that the same story repeats itself--
  • As far as well funded, I would suggest that very few museums will survive much longer than their benefactor.
  • I think we have all seen 'museums' that are, in reality, just an internet frontage just to get donations of hardware. I cannot count the number of times of these 'museums' boasts about their latest donation that includes some document that has never been scanned and archived, but they can't be bothered to take/send it somewhere to have it scanned at my cost. As near as i can tell they are simply hoarders that are completely unwilling to contribute to the vintage community.
  • Donated items are nearly always duplicates, so the extras sit in storage until the space is needed and the duplicates somehow disappear. Be they sold off, scrapped, parted out, landfill, ebay, or (wink-wink) fall off the truck.
  • Most museums do not have the manpower, expertise, or (sadly) the interest to restore hardware to running condition. Plus, there is little incentive to keep hardware functional.
  • Except for the big iron, which people seem to love watching blinking lights and 9 track tapes, most computer hardware are static displays. It just isn't practical to have interactive displays for anything except the most common, easily repaired/replaced, robust, and popular hardware (think video game systems)
  • Changing displays is expensive and time consuming, so displays tend to stay the same for years.
As far as research, I would like to hear about successful efforts in getting computer museums to help support someone's research and to share information. I tried for months to get a very large nearby (now closed) museum to simply dump a set of PROMs and to share some printed documentation for systems they have sitting in storage. They had a number of these early intel development systems, and all were in storage because they were considered to be of too limited interest to be displayed. I was offering to pay for scanning the documentation, yet they refused my offers and made it clear they had no interest in actually preserving history or contributing to the vintage computer community.
As another example, for well over a year a group of us have been begging a computer museum to share a paper tape of a very early assembler.... even if they just scanned or photographed the tape, we could recover the code. Even a museum-to-museum request has been fruitless.

I think archiving the knowledge, documentation, and designs are all more important than displaying hardware in person. Personally, I just haven't seen that the computer museums I have interacted with are making much of an effort in that regard.
 
I tend to second candrews' opinion, I am afraid. While I have absolutely, thoroughly enjoyed visiting some large museums where they had actually interesting, extremely rare machines (e.g. huge old IBM mainframes, Cray, Thinking Machines), most places that collect rare but niche systems have no time/means (or sometimes will) to cater to actual researchers or private individuals who may actually have a "real" use for some of those systems.

It is effectively impossible to use those machine for actual research, as it would mean relocating near the museum for weeks, and possibly bring lots of additional equipment to the location. These niche systems either remain in storage forever, or are slowly restored and then showed as part of random collections of other systems, with probably 99% of people who visit the museum passing by and merely giving them a glance.

I don't want to sound too negative, some folks are really dedicated and do remarkably well...
 
I think museums are vital to preserve the rarest and unmanageable hardware. However, any museums that do not allow user interactions are always very disappointing. After all, we can all google pics of whatever machine we like. There are clear examples of machines that should be preserved and not touched, but most can be fixed and maintained.

In addition, for very good reasons (hardware preservation being one) they tend to accept way to much donations that are destined to stay in the back for years. I feel passionately about preserving hardware but only to allow people to experience and use it.
 
falter said:
I do regret never getting to see that place. I would have liked to have attended one of the open house things he put on. He claimed to have the largest collection in Canada, although I think he had many multiples of machines like the C64.

I still can't quite believe he's gone - he was only a couple of years older than I am. And of course his passing highlights one of the risks with smaller private museums - if the owner is gone, often the museum vanishes with them.
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When he had too many multiples, he sold them during the open house - at very reasonable prices. I got a C64 in box for $20, a C128 in box with boxed 1571 for $50 and an SGI Indy with Indycams for $20. I think visiting the museum cost only $2 or something. He obviously wasn't in it for personal profit.
 
snclucas said:
I think museums are vital to preserve the rarest and unmanageable hardware. However, any museums that do not allow user interactions are always very disappointing. After all, we can all google pics of whatever machine we like. There are clear examples of machines that should be preserved and not touched, but most can be fixed and maintained.

In addition, for very good reasons (hardware preservation being one) they tend to accept way to much donations that are destined to stay in the back for years. I feel passionately about preserving hardware but only to allow people to experience and use it.
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Yeah.. I've seen the storage rooms in pics of a few museums.. some of them have got multiples Sol 20s and Altairs stacked like firewood.
 
Mr.Amiga500 said:
When he had too many multiples, he sold them during the open house - at very reasonable prices. I got a C64 in box for $20, a C128 in box with boxed 1571 for $50 and an SGI Indy with Indycams for $20. I think visiting the museum cost only $2 or something. He obviously wasn't in it for personal profit.
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He seemed like a cool guy. Sadly he was too far away to visit. It's incredible to think what he built in Brantford and then poof.. gone.
 
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