A card processor for sale leads me to this comment:
"Finally, many customers found plugboard programming easier than programming with code, both because they were more familiar with it and because it is visual and direct."
It would have been appropriate for another wealthy person
to just buy the museum out entirely / pay the ones closing it down /
and reopen it.
Preferably then donated the entire collection to some
non-profit or whatever other way to organize. and
include some clause that selling them off is not possible.
That person being Gates would have made sense.
But obviously this did not happen.
Most of their functional unix machines ended up with https://icm.museum/ but there's some cool stuff in these auctions that will hopefully be put on display or managed by a group who can keep them running rather than warehoused.
“The Living Computer Museum also fulfills my hope that the achievements of early computer engineers aren’t lost to time.” - Paul Allen
"Allen’s wishes were for his considerable assets to be sold off and for the proceeds to go to charity." - Jody Allen, Paul's sister and manager of his estate
Unless she's sheltering that money under a family foundation and doling it back to themselves via directors' stipends, who's holding her to that promise?
does it work? If only I kept my old computers they would have retained their value , and then some . who could have guessed that old computers would be a good investment
This is incredibly depressing. Such a priceless collection of unique computing artifacts, many the last examples of their kind. And at the LCM the public could reach out and touch them, play games on them, explore them!
And now the collection is parceled off and scattered six ways to Sunday, so an heiress can add a few million to her inheritance of billions, presumably.
How many of these will languish and fall to neglect? And why the fuck did none of the rich tech bros buy out the museum to keep it open? What will become of that CDC 6500?
maybe no one knows what to do with it? This is the problem with collecting. it needs storage and time. Many people don't want to devote the time to having to run a museum. It's not a matter of cheapness.
In the case of LCM, it would have simply been a matter of employing the people who previously worked there. I don't blame anyone for not wanting to do it - that seems like a strange thing to do - but it is not a mystery what needed to be done.
I wouldn't want to speculate on what Paul Allen's sister would have asked for everything, or whether she's even someone who can be dealt with. But I do tend to think we're going to see these priceless historical artifacts go for pennies on the dollar. There's a lot that could be said about that, but certainly the work of the people who were employed at that museum was a great part of its value.
"Finally, many customers found plugboard programming easier than programming with code, both because they were more familiar with it and because it is visual and direct."
https://onlineonly.christies.com/s/firsts-history-computing-... https://www.righto.com/2022/04/reverse-engineering-mysteriou...