Slashdot Mirror
Computer History Museum
nickynicky9doors writes: "New Scientist has an interview with computer historian Michael Williams. Mr. Williams has undertaken to set up a world class computer museum. My favourite was always the Cray 2 which used artificial human blood plasma as a coolant, but the article talks of the 1965 HoneyWell kitchen computer which was built for the Neiman Marcus department store. At a cost of $10,500 it came with 2 programming manuals and a cookbook. Garbage In was by way of flickering binary switches and Garbage Out was by a row of blinking lights. There's more at www.computerhistory.org."
I always wondered who was willing to pay $75 a week for my plasma. At least I know it was going to a good use!
Karma: Marginal (mostly due to the border around the website)
Museums like these help to illustrate just how complex modern computers truly are.
You get to journey back into time and put yourself in the shoes of researchers who were trying to figure out how to solve the most complex problems of the day, all while having a newfangled electronic appliance the size of a room do all of the work for you.
In times such as ours where computing for the every day person involves little more than pointing, clicking, and writing IMs or emails, we should all learn to appreciate and marvel at computers.
There's no better way to learn about the current information technology field than by studying the past.
I applaud people like Michael Williams.
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
My favourite was always the Cray 2 which used artificial human blood plasma as a coolant....
Oh, man, do I even need to take the time to correct this?
The Cray 2, like several successors including the C90 and T90, used liquid fluorocarbon as a coolant. This is true.
To say that liquid fluorocarbon is artificial blood plasma is simply false. There are several commercial products that can be used as blood substitutes-- such as Oxycyte-- but these are oxygen-carrying perfluorocarbon (PFC) emulsions. These products are about as similar to the liquid coolant used in the Cray 2 as scrambled eggs are to mayonnaise.
The coolants used in the various Crays, plus lots of other electronic systems, were all pure perfluorocarbon liquids, like Fluorinert, which is a commercial product produced and sold by 3M. They're good choices for immersion cooling because they're chemically inert. Ironically, most of them (like FC-87, fer instance) have boiling points well below that of water; FC-87's is around 30C. They're useful anyway because they're dense and have specific heats about four times less than water's.
The various artificial blood products, though, are PFC emulsions, in which microscopic droplets of PFC are suspended in a saline solution. These liquids can be used because gases like oxygen and CO2 are highly soluble in PFC. Since the droplets of PFC are about 70 times smaller than red blood cells, it's very easy for them to act like RBCs in the blood stream for gas transfer.
The fact that Cray's are liquid cooled is neat enough without messing it up with misinformation.
Is it possible the public doesn't care? Yes.
Witness "The Computer Museum". Originally Gordon Bell's private collection (as in the VAX guy then Nat'l Science Foundation) it was formalized into "The Digital Computer Museum" - Digital as in DEC.
Later when folks at other companies became leery of donating gifts to their competitor's in-house museum it was spun off into the space built for a transportation museum and became "The Computer Museum". Gordon's wife Gwen took a leadership role, DEC donated lots of support and the place went... nowhere.
It was a good try. Gwen's vision had always been halls of gray boxes through to the movers and shakers of the industry would make pilgrimages, fund through philanthropic impulse, perhaps hold power lunches at a cafe. Instead the bread-and-butter reality of school groups and tourists finally prevailed and more "friendly" exhibits (eg the Walk-Through Computer) were installed as budgets permitted.
However too little too late. The costs of running a museum were high, lots of local computer groups were themselves failing (many of them burning the TCM along the way) and the place never really found its feet. The great hope of the sexy Java-based virtual fish tank teaching all sorts of interesting theories took a few million bucks in donations and produced a pretty but most incomprehensible exhibit that, frankly, tanked the place.
The programs went to Boston's Museum of Science, the collections out to the west coast branch where they were reincarnated as what we see today.
So - do folks care? I doubt it.
Museums cost. Yes I know to folks on the outside they look nice and simple but they're not. What you see on the floor is usually far less then 1/10th of a collection: A collection that requires high-quality (museum-quality) storage if you're to treat it right for the ages. It requires research and documentation and maintenance. It requires insurance and access and continual expansion if it is to keep up. The public facilities themselves need to be maintained and insured and secured and managed. The exhibits must be maintained and updated and replaced on a regular place if you want folks to ever come back. Grants need to be applied for and marketing has to happen to get word out and keep folks coming. Staff needs to be paid for as well as support be given to research programs and visiting scholars. Then there are the daily school groups and tour groups and regular private rentals and public special events etc.
This all takes a lot of money and widespread support, particularly if you're to do a good job and respect the trust your collection represents.
Yes hope springs eternal but we've already been here once. Yes it's Silly Valley and there's a dearth of tourist facilities and lots of folks who did get rich on dotcom and are looking for something they can sponsor. But Boston had it's own computer folks and more students then you can shake a stick at. Six of one, half dozen of the other and it still doesn't add up to enough. I've fond memories of TCM and wish TMHC the best but feel ultimately this sort of project is too big for a stand-alone institution while serving too small a niche; other institutions like the Smithsonian with larger budgets, stronger research programs, their own collections with more facilities & more services would do better.
But hey, the second time is always better.
The author was involved at the setting up of Computer Place at Boston's Museum of Science. Later I became a manager at The Computer Museum. Afterwards I went back to school and from there into industry though I've always kept up with much of The Computer Museum news from a distance. If we met there drop a line.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Looking at this stuff, most of which was created before I was born, I can't help but feel a twinge of remorse. It seems the Golden Age of computer geekdom died with the Information Age.
Things were really hopping in computers a few decades ago. The high-level-laguage, GUI's, timesharing systems, networking. . . it was all new and exciting. It seems, though, that the wave has broken. Nothing new seems to have happened since the early '90's, when the WWW was first envisioned.
I catch myself sitting in classes with other CS majors who have never really learned DOS and are awed by and afraid of OpenGL and thinking back to high school when I spent my free time programming cute little VGA hacks in x86 assembly language and can't help but feel a twinge of superiority based on some unfounded feeling that I have touched the machine itself and they have not.
Then I go to a museum like this, take a look at what my elders were working on, and realize that I am the small fish. The magi have played their part, and I have a feeling of dread that the field has more or less reached its plateau point.
The timeline starts only at 1945. That misses things like Colossus which is a decent candidate for first electronic programmable (UTM) computer.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
Today I went out "garage saleing" - and managed to find a couple of "interesting" books:
The Secret Guide to Computers - Vol 1
and
The Secret Guide to Computers - Vol 2: Deep Secrets
Both are of the 11th edition, written and published by Russ Walter - no ISBN, because in Russ' own words: "Ha ha ha! You think this book is standard?"
These books are weird, and wonderful at the same time - they have strange "rainbow" colored covers, and the introduction in the first volume starts out with the line "Computers are like drugs: you begin by spending just a little money on them, but then you get so excited by the experience-and so hooked-that you wind up spending more and more money, to feed your habit."
It takes the reader through introduction to programming, microcomputers, a bit of computer history, language history (listing some languages and origins I didn't even know about - and I collect this kind of info!) - you name the topic, and if it is from the early-80's and prior, it is in there. There is a wonderful section on computer "art", with crude black-and-white "photos" of early computer line drawings - including a series of Ivan Sutherland's "Aircraft Carrier Landing Simulator" - 3D graphics from the late 60's - early 70's!!!
What is even more strange about the books is the amount of background info they give on the histories of various companies involved in microcomputers - plus info on the micros themselves (once again, if it existed, it is in the book - CP/M even features pretty prominantly). It gets even more strange - vague and not-so-vague references to sex, etc - about throughout the book: In the section on Russ' version of assembly language (his own creation), the opening section title is "SEXY ASS" - I kid you NOT (watch the lameness filter catch that). That section details what he terms "Simple EXcellent-for-You ASSembler" - then goes on to "teach" how to use this variant of assembler...
He has another language called "EASY"...
How rare (or common?) was this set of books - I have never seen another copy (as opposed to David Ahl's BASIC Games series, of which I have seen numerous copies)? Has anyone else come across it?
I couldn't resist buying it - and at a quarter per book (oooh, a whole 50 cents!) - it was MINE...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon