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Australian Computer Museum Needs a Saviour

Posted by timothy on from the mad-max-perhaps dept.

femto writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that the Australian Computer Museum (archive.org) is to close due to lack of funds. It is the largest computer collection in Australia. Failing an offer of a permanent home, they need storage space or money to pay for it. They also need some way to sort the collection."

8 of 179 comments (clear)

  1. RIP Bob Bemer - The Father of ASCII by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I just read some sad news on CNN.com - computer geek/futurist/programmer Bob Bemer died on Tuesday at his home in Texas. He died at age 84 after a long battle with cancer. I'm sure we'll all miss him, even if you weren't a fan of his work there's no denying his contribution to computer science. Truly a geek icon.

  2. DUPE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    This dupe story is over a year old!!!

    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/20/014320 7&mode=thread&tid=137



    1. Re:DUPE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      It's not a dupe. It is a new story. It's just that 12 months later, the museum has hit the wall again. It sort of indicates that the musem's problems will be a difficult to solve.

  3. The good museums of this type are boring by Animats · · Score: 2, Informative
    One of the best is the Kensington Science Museum in London. Their collection is excellent, with the originals of many famous machines. Yet few people are interested in those items; all the crowds are around the dumbed-down "interpretive exhibits".

    The Kensington Science Museum has early computers, all the way back to Babbage. The first locomotive, the first lathe, Watt's first steam engine - they have it all. And that stuff you can at least figure out by looking at it.

    Electronics is much worse to display. The Henry Ford Museum used to have display cases full of early electronics ("Capacitor, Cornell-Dublier, circa 1932"), ignored by almost everybody.

  4. Re:Powerhouse Museum by YOU+LIKEWISE+FAIL+IT · · Score: 3, Informative

    I think if you have a look at their homepage you'll see that the PHM is indeed holding some of their stuff. But even the Powerhouse has finite storage space. Even the University of Technology, Sydney, just around the corner from the PHM probably wouldn't be able to stow them - the CompSci faculty recently moved into new and luxurious buildings, but they lack in terms of warehousing capacity or open space to place a free standing exhibit.

    YLFI
    --
    One god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
  5. Re:Hmmmm by goon+america · · Score: 2, Informative

    Amusingly, this joke originated with Jack Kemp, about Bob Dole ("Bob Dole's library burned down..."). Years later Kemp was picked as Dole's running mate in the 1996 presidential election.

  6. One Northern Hemisphere equivalent by Burb · · Score: 2, Informative

    Folks in the UK might like to take a look at the museum of computing in Swindon, UK. http://www.digitalhistory.org.uk. It's a small-scale operation that needs your support too. I couldn't compare the this one with the Australian one, but we do need to preserve our history.

    --

  7. Re:Happy snaps? by ACMS+Prez · · Score: 2, Informative

    The pictures (and the site) are a few years out-of-date, and really were a "trial run" of the website. When we get time (huh!) we will be posting much newer ones in a much better format site.