[HN Gopher] Living Computers Museum to permanently close, auctio...
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Living Computers Museum to permanently close, auction vintage items
Author : dboreham
Score : 400 points
Date : 2024-06-25 14:35 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.geekwire.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.geekwire.com)
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I thought it was so sad that they shut down the computer museum
| in Boston years ago. It makes me think of how much more
| geographically diverse the computer industry was in the US back
| in the 1980s and how Boston has just given up on its history. It
| used to be associated with the Boston Children's Museum which had
| a DEC-10 way back in the early 1980s. They were pretty lucky
| because DEC would usually donate PDP-8s or PDP-11s to places like
| that.
| caphector wrote:
| It's still around but it was moved to the old SGI building in
| the SF/Bay Area. I went to the old one growing up; my dad
| worked at DEC and it was great fun to see all the hardware at
| the CHM.
| kragen wrote:
| the computer museum history center existed as a separate
| entity before being transferred the assets of the boston
| computer museum; it's not simply a relocated boston computer
| museum
| 13of40 wrote:
| > A highlight of the sale is a computer which Allen helped
| restore and on which he worked, a DEC PDP-10: KI-10. Built in
| 1971, it's the first computer that both Allen and Microsoft co-
| founder Bill Gates ever used prior to founding Microsoft. It's
| estimated to fetch $30,000 to $50,000.
|
| What? I know lots of people who would save them the trouble and
| buy it now for $50K. How bad of an investment could that be?
|
| Edit: I'm picturing something large refrigerator sized like the
| PDP-8 at RePC down the street. If it's cheap because it's a
| 20-ton white elephant that's a different story.
| buildbot wrote:
| It's about destruction, not making sense in my opinion.
| mikestew wrote:
| There's a picture in TFA, with a desk for scale. It would be
| several refrigerators, but might still fit in your garage.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Putting an item up for sale to the highest bidder insulates a
| seller from future claims that the item was sold for a low-ball
| price in some kind of sweetheart/kickback deal.
| dboreham wrote:
| A dec-10 is pretty big (at the LCM it is in a room that's
| something like 40' by 20'), needs air conditioning, and needs a
| beefy electrical supply.
|
| Nobody really knows the market price for such a thing because
| very few are left in running order and there are very few
| people with the resources to provide it with water and hay.
| ghaff wrote:
| > How bad of an investment could that be?
|
| Probably pretty bad.
| buildbot wrote:
| It's so incredibly stupid to sell off each piece of the museum -
| 50K for a DEC-10? Does the Allen estate really need the cash?
| Jody Allen is simply bent on destroying her brother's legacy.
|
| It was extremely cool and educational to visit the museum as an
| EE undergraduate, to visually see and use parts of the history of
| computing. It's a massive loss to loose this collection. Some of
| the items we will never get back or see again.
| glompers wrote:
| Could perhaps UW (for instance) EE or CS alumni arrange to bid
| and give the collection to the department at UW across town?
| kragen wrote:
| as i said in another comment, that's possibly the only dec-10
| in working condition in the world
|
| selling it off piece by piece probably improves the chances
| that the most important pieces will be preserved rather than
| the whole thing going to a scrap metal dealer
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I doubt this. Not because I doubt your sincerity; I'm just
| pessimistic given the hostility displayed by the
| administrative class toward anything that doesn't have a
| currency symbol in front of it.
| kragen wrote:
| pdp-10 fans have currency symbols tho. lots of people on
| hackers-l are, as they say, financially independent, and a
| fair fraction of them are donors to the chm and fans of the
| pdp-10. plus you have the modern #pdp-10 freenode crowd
| emmet wrote:
| First time hearing "administrative class" and god that's
| fitting for the MBA crowd
| IdPreferNotTo wrote:
| aparatchiks we called them where i am from
| vanchor3 wrote:
| > _It's so incredibly stupid to sell off each piece of the
| museum - 50K for a DEC-10? Does the Allen estate really need
| the cash?_
|
| Supposedly the proceeds are going to "charitable causes",
| though the article doesn't go into any more detail.
| bdowling wrote:
| > Does the Allen estate really need the cash?
|
| The article doesn't clearly distinguish between the museum
| auctioning off the item it owns and the Allen estate auctioning
| the items that it had loaned to the museum, but there's a
| difference.
| jojobas wrote:
| How much would you pay to get to see the DEC-10 again?
|
| Is there that much non-sentimental value about a working
| specimen as compared to docs and pictures?
| mulmen wrote:
| > Jody Allen is simply bent on destroying her brother's legacy.
|
| Jody Allen is respecting her brother's wishes. Paul Allen
| wanted his estate liquidated and the proceeds donated to
| charity. That's exactly what's happening.
| armadsen wrote:
| I adored the Living Computers Museum. Being able to just sit down
| and use an Apple 1, Xerox Alto, Altair 8800, and so many more in
| the same place was incredible. And then, a friendly museum
| employee being there to show you how to use it, tell you about
| what made it unique, etc. was even better. It was so much better
| than most look-but-don't-touch museums.
|
| It's really a travesty that Paul Allen's sister seems bent on
| dismantling everything he left behind.
| sterlind wrote:
| why is she doing this? for the money, or out of some form of
| spite?
| eschaton wrote:
| Money and an absolute disinterest in anything Paul cared
| about.
| rbanffy wrote:
| This is not just disinterest. It feels like active
| contempt.
| eschaton wrote:
| I think she doesn't care about it enough to hold it in
| contempt except insofar as it represents an asset of
| Paul's that hasn't been converted into money.
| longdustytrail wrote:
| The same thing happened to another one of Paul's wacky
| passion projects, the Cinerama theater. That ended up being
| taken over by the Seattle Film Festival after being shut down
| for a few years.
|
| My impression is that Paul died somewhat suddenly and simply
| didn't make arrangements to keep these things going. His
| sister is not interested in them so she's winding them down.
|
| It's too bad he didn't set up some kind of endowment before
| he passed. Maybe he didn't want to or maybe he just didn't
| get around to it.
|
| I wonder what will happen to MoPop/EMP. AFAIK that's always
| been a financial black hole.
| zimm wrote:
| https://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Bodyguards-Vulcan-
| CE...
|
| It doesn't seem like she was the nicest person.
| vintermann wrote:
| That's geoblocked.
| dn3500 wrote:
| Strange, I'm in Mexico and if anyone gets blocked it's
| usually me. But I can read this one.
|
| Anyway here you go:
|
| https://archive.ph/ru5Jm
| usr1106 wrote:
| Many US newspapers block users from the EU because they
| fear GDPR.
|
| Not sure why newspapers are "leading" on that front. All
| the tech sites are open.
| wakeneddreamer wrote:
| The advertising networks and associated trackers on many
| news sites would not pass gdpr
| usr1106 wrote:
| Sure. But I doubt the tech sites which are mostly open
| use significantly different ad networks.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| This is what I wrote earlier on HN when this last came up
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34840654):
|
| Jodie Allen (his sister and only heir) is just following
| his instructions, from what I understand. She isn't
| financially benefiting from shutting down the computer
| museum, she is just executing his will:
|
| > According to multiple reports Paul Allen's will states
| that the Paul G. Allen Trust, which contains billions in
| assets, including the NFL's Seattle Seahawks and NBA's
| Portland Trail Blazers, will be liquidated upon his death
| and the assets used to fund his passion projects. Paul
| Allen died in October 2018 and the Trail Blazers have been
| rumored to be on the sales block for the past few years,
| but all's quiet on the Seahawks front. Is Jody Allen trying
| to hold onto the Seahawks against her brother's wishes?
|
| https://theshadowleague.com/the-instructions-are-clear-
| the-s...
|
| The problem is, a lot of projects didn't make it into his
| list of passion projects. More:
|
| > Sealed lips aside, here's what we know: In 2010, Allen
| pledged to bequeath the majority of his wealth to
| philanthropy. (During his lifetime, Allen gave away more
| than $2 billion, according to the Chronicle of
| Philanthropy.) Tasked with this mammoth undertaking is his
| sister Jody Allen, trustee and executor of his estate, who
| is bound by her brother's wishes as set out in the trust.
|
| https://crosscut.com/culture/2022/11/16b-sale-paul-allens-
| ar...
|
| One can accuse his sister of not following his
| instructions, I guess, but unless we know what those
| instructions are, it isn't a very easy accusation to back
| up.
| indrora wrote:
| It's assassination at one fundamental level.
|
| Spite is one way to put it. She has no love for anything
| computers, technology, or otherwise.
| TMWNN wrote:
| I doubt she hates her late brother, any more than any widow
| who sells off or throws away her late husband's computer
| collection after his death (which occurs so, so often that it
| is probably the normal outcome after the collector's death,
| as opposed to an exception) hates him. It's disinterest.
| ghaff wrote:
| People get rid of most of the stuff that they inherit, even
| if it's a "collection" that the relative cared a lot about
| --especially if it's worth a significant amount of money.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| I asked my dad to keep a collection of books for me,
| about 1.4m x 60cm of bookshelf. They were booked from my
| mum's family some dating from late 1800s. "They weren't
| worth anything, I gave them away" ... of course I'm
| probably the only person to whom they were really worth
| much. My mum and I shared a love of poetry at one time
| ...
| qludes wrote:
| The sad thing about book collections is that they're not
| worth buying for book antiquities because chances are
| that most won't sell at all and the few games might just
| be worth a few $ so most just end up in the recycling bin
| once the owner dies. On the other hand that means if
| you're willing to buy whole shelves filled with books
| that haven't been preaccessed they can be incredibly
| cheap.
| vundercind wrote:
| This, not buying armfuls of books off individual sellers,
| is how used book stores get much of their stock. Running
| a good one (not just full of shitloads of Stephen King
| and Nora Roberts) means going to lots of estate sales.
|
| Also, a lot there for a while but less now that they're
| almost all gone, being there with cash in hand to buy the
| remaining stock in bulk when a competitor/colleague goes
| out of business.
|
| Sometimes in a good used book store you can spot
| substantial remnants of some particular enthusiast's
| collection, like a whole bunch of German-language
| original 19th century scholarship on the history of the
| conquest of South America or whatever. Some improbable
| number of books on some niche topic, nearly all of which
| probably belonged to one person (or, sometimes,
| institution) before landing there.
| themadturk wrote:
| The official story, at least, is that his will dictates his
| former holdings be sold off and the proceeds donated to
| charity. So it sounds like she's doing her duty as executor
| of his estate. Similar questions have lingered for years over
| what will become of the Seahawks and the Trailblazers.
| magnawave wrote:
| The best I can tell from talking with insiders at a couple of
| his properties, is that he did a beyond bad job at
| "succession planning". The light exception being MoPOP of
| course but that's a different beast. So without setting up
| foundations/entities to fund/run your projects and getting
| people aligned before you pass, odds are your estate won't.
|
| So want to blame the family. But really Paul Allen's fault
| here.
|
| It's a shame, was such a great museum.
| qingcharles wrote:
| It's crazy that Bill wouldn't step in and solve this
| problem. This place is a rounding error on his checking
| account.
| 93po wrote:
| I would guess that there's also family politics at play
| and I can't imagine anyone wanting to get involved with
| that.
| qingcharles wrote:
| It sounds like all his family want is cashdollars, so
| they might put on their Sunday suits and play nicey-nicey
| if Bill showed an interest?
| imperfect_light wrote:
| The dude was sick on and off for years, could have had an army
| of lawyers setting up these places to continue after him, and
| didn't bother. Don't blame his sister who was left this mess.
| tivert wrote:
| Some embarrassingly rich person needs to give the Computer
| History Museum enough money to buy all of it.
|
| It's puzzling why all his stuff was organized in such a way that
| it could get wound down like this. Seems like it would have been
| way better to create a nonprofit then endow it with enough money
| to keep operating independently.
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| Bill Gates seems like a prime option.
| zimm wrote:
| info@gatesfoundation.org
|
| Email and ask
| dboreham wrote:
| Presumably billg is reading this thread already.
| tivert wrote:
| > Presumably billg is reading this thread already.
|
| I would assume he's not wasting his time with HN. He's
| rich enough and well-known enough that I'd think he'd be
| able to get superior versions of everything HN can
| provide.
| fragmede wrote:
| I mean, if you have billg money, I guess you could have a
| couple ex-FAAMG software developers on payroll just so
| you could call them up at any hour of the day and have
| them give you uninformed hot-takes about an article you
| found online and just forwarded them, and need them to
| tell you something based on the headline without actually
| reading the article, but that seems a bit weird. I don't
| even have Snoop Dogg money to pay someone to roll joints
| for me though, so what do I know about having billg-
| levels of money.
| vundercind wrote:
| "Hello, Phil? Yeah, doing fine, look, I need 200 takes on
| React, 50 of them actually having nothing to do with it,
| 100 that are just flames, 40 that are deeply stupid, and
| 10 that are at least informed and a bit insighthful, but
| not really _that_ interesting or valuable. Please just
| jumble them up rather than sorting them by quality or
| usefulness, I want to have to waste a bunch of time and
| emotional energy finding the good ones. Great, thanks."
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| So far this is not my HN experience. But there are many
| things one can spend time with. Reading web site might
| not interest all I admit.
| kragen wrote:
| the hn experience wouldn't be complete with only
| uninformed hot takes; it also requires that they argue
| with everything you say and then accuse you of being
| disingenuous
| dboreham wrote:
| There's a better place to hear software industry
| insiders' take on the dec-10?
| dasl wrote:
| The email address responded with an automated message
| saying they are no longer checking the inbox. It directed
| me to submit my query at their contact for instead:
| https://www.gatesfoundation.org/about/contact/write-to-us
|
| I submitted this message, feel free to copy the same text
| and submit yourself also:
|
| -----------------------------
|
| I recently became aware that the Living Computers Museum,
| which was created by Paul Allen (Microsoft co-founder), is
| shutting down. As someone in the technology industry, I
| find that very sad! The museum was really magical. I'm
| wondering if the Gates Foundation can step up and save the
| museum from closing?
|
| https://www.geekwire.com/2024/seattles-living-computers-
| muse...
|
| Thank you for your consideration
| qingcharles wrote:
| Shana Tarbell, Chief Operating Officer:
| shana.tarbell@gatesfoundation.org
|
| Kim Webber, Senior Program Officer:
| kim.webber@gatesfoundation.org
|
| Jennifer Alcorn, Deputy Director, Giving Opportunities &
| Gates Philanthropy Partners:
| jennifer.alcorn@gatesfoundation.org
|
| Amy K. Carter, Director, Community Engagement:
| amy.carter@gatesfoundation.org
|
| Jillian Foote, Senior Program Officer, CEO External
| Engagement: jillian.foote@gatesfoundation.org
| shrubble wrote:
| If it was donated by someone, shouldn't they give it back to the
| person who donated it? How does it get sold for cash?
| taw28 wrote:
| In short, because it was donated and not loaned. Once it leaves
| your hands, the museum can do as it wishes (within the
| restrictions of its bylaws).
| singleshot_ wrote:
| "Philanthropic trust" is probably the concept you missed
| here. Don't worry, it looks like Allen missed it too.
| ghaff wrote:
| And with fairly unusual exceptions, museums don't tend to
| like a lot of restrictions on what they can do with
| donations.
| erickhill wrote:
| They have a basement filled with hundreds if not thousands of
| computer donations stockpiled like the warehouse scene from
| Indiana Jones.
|
| Also, it's "LCM" not "LHM".
| rbanffy wrote:
| I would demand the donations back - closing it and selling off
| the collection is NOT what the donors wanted.
| evereverever wrote:
| I am saddened that I never was able to visit this museum.
|
| With all of that money it could have easily been fully funded for
| 100 years.
| mrpippy wrote:
| What a damn shame, I went in 2019 and had an amazing time. Played
| with a NeXT cube, Sun/3, Lisa, Alto, and so many more machines.
| rbanffy wrote:
| It sickens me something like this is happening to this unique
| museum. I knew it was a matter of time, but, still, it's a
| tragedy that's hard to comprehend.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Deleted all the social accounts and website offline too? Harsh
| :-(
| smsm42 wrote:
| We still don't have proper digital preservation mechanisms. If
| you are an executor of an estate, and you have a website and a
| twitter account, what you do with them? You are surely not
| interested in running them by yourself. You can't just leave
| them alone - website support costs money, and also if left
| alone, it will inevitably be broken into and cause all kinds of
| trouble. You can't just sell it to somebody (at least not to
| somebody you'd want to sell) or donate it. There's no
| organizations dedicated to preserving such properties, as far
| as I know. So, what do you do? You shut them down, you have not
| other alternative.
| ghaff wrote:
| Exactly. Unless you've setup a sufficient endowment and a
| legal entity of some sort, it's not reasonable to expect a
| relative to keep your passion project going. And even if they
| do for sentimental reasons for a while, that's just kicking
| the can a bit down the road.
| qludes wrote:
| If it's something like a blog archive.org works. And if it's
| a website people care about it's as simple as giving the
| archiver/internet historian/data hoarder hobbyist niche to
| back it all up on ipfs.
|
| If they wrote things you can digitize them and turn them into
| an epub that might last a few hundred years. And you can
| absolutely donate a website, that's just a matter of picking
| the right license and hosting the actual data somewhere, not
| the actual website.
| lobsterthief wrote:
| And unfortunately archive.org is woefully underfunded. We
| take it for granted and it could be gone someday. Please
| support it if you have the means to do so.
| smsm42 wrote:
| An one-time snapshot is not the active site under the
| original domain. You can do a snapshot (even though there's
| no organized procedure even for that, afaik) but that's not
| the same as keeping the site running in perpetuity.
| leotravis10 wrote:
| A HUGE cultural loss and I'm grateful that I got to visit it a
| few years ago.
| da-bacon wrote:
| There was a world before the dot com explosion when tinkering
| with computers was odd, a passion that gripped few, and was
| looked upon as extremely odd by most. This museum was the closest
| thing to being able to travel back to that era. You could plop
| yourself down at a Xerox Alto and hack away to your heart's
| content. Being able to share this experience with my son is
| something I will always remember about this museum.
|
| A sad day for computing, and a sad day for Seattle.
| thriftwy wrote:
| One thing I _didn 't_ notice when travelling to Bay Area is
| thriving small museum ecosystem.
|
| Apparently in the US they prefer to run museums like commercial
| venues, so either it's a large theme park of a museum, or not at
| all. I see the news where houses of very notable people like Ray
| Bradbury[1] sold and scrapped - elsewhere they'd be made a local
| prodigy of a "house-museum".
|
| 1. https://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-ray-
| bradbu...
| linguae wrote:
| (Disclaimer: I am a member of the Computer History Museum.)
|
| We have the Computer History Museum in Mountain View
| (https://computerhistory.org/). While unfortunately visitors
| are not allowed to touch the equipment unlike the Living
| Computers Museum in Seattle, this is still a wonderful place
| for people to learn about the history of computing.
|
| In addition, the Computer History Museum has many events, often
| free, where pioneers of computing are invited to give talks
| about their work. I've been to events that celebrated the Xerox
| Alto, Smalltalk, the Apple Lisa, and the original Apple
| Macintosh. I've met Dan Ingalls (Smalltalk), Charles Simonyi
| (Bravo and Microsoft Word), Marshall Kirk McKusick (BSD), and
| Donald Knuth at the Computer History Museum, and I've seen
| Adele Goldberg (Smalltalk), Jean Louis Gassee (Apple, Be), and
| even Steve Wozniak in attendance. It's an amazing privilege
| being able to have casual conversations with people who have
| profoundly shaped society.
|
| It's truly a blessing that we have this important resource in
| Silicon Valley and that there is a stream of donors who help
| keep this museum alive. I wish the Living Computers Museum in
| Seattle had the same type of leadership the Computer History
| Museum has, but barring any last-minute interventions it may be
| too late to save that museum.
| thriftwy wrote:
| Exactly the one I meant under the theme park comment -
| another one is Monterey Bay Aquarium.
|
| Don't get me wrong, both are awesome museums. One thing that
| caught my attention in CHM is that as you approach the end of
| century, it becomes an exposition of bright boxes of computer
| software - quite a change from mechanical marvels of early
| last century or metal and plastic boxes of mid-century. But
| overall it's pretty great and totally worth a visit.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| It's definitely too late for LCM -- the heirs don't care
| about the societal value and are parting it out. It's gone.
|
| It'd be super cool if CHM added a living computers wing.
| They've done a few nice restorations of some large machines,
| but it's not really the same as something like making a few
| terminals connected to a PDP-10 directly available to the
| public. Or some of the early, weird PCs, Unix boxes, Lisp
| machines.
| VonGuard wrote:
| The Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment in Oakland has
| all-playable exhibitions of home computer and console games
| on original hardware. You can play something on the C64,
| Atari 800 or Sega Genesis, for example.
| dsand wrote:
| There are no heirs for LCM. Allen's will specified what do
| to in particular with a few of his many assets. But for all
| the rest, he wrote to sell it all, and donate the raised
| money to charities. So the will's executor (his sister)
| does not have the latitude to divert some assets to other
| outcomes.
|
| LCM was never self-sustaining via tickets. It always needed
| yearly infusions of cash from Allen. Re-opening it as it
| was would require similar levels of cash to burn. I wish
| that Allen had loved the LCM enough to design an endowment
| to keep it going, and had specified in the will how to
| treat LCM specially. But he did not. What he wanted instead
| for his legacy, was large cash donations to various
| charities.
| ghaff wrote:
| The people railing here are ignoring the fact that for
| whatever reason (he didn't actually care that much, he
| was sick and didn't have the time) didn't explicitly
| provide for this museum to be maintained into the
| foreseeable future. That may or may not be a bad outcome
| but it's what happens when someone passes and they
| haven't made an explicit provision with funding for
| something they owned.
|
| By and large, museums need to cover their operating costs
| and apparently this one didn't.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I love the CHM and I wish it would invest more effort in
| interactivity. Visiting is a mix of excitement and
| frustration; it's thrilling to see Great Computers of History
| up close but depressing not to see any of them _doing_
| anything that would help viewers appreciate what it might
| have been like to use it.
| bap wrote:
| I think you might find that the larger metropolitan areas are
| as you say. As one gets away from the coasts and into more
| rural areas you'll find smaller museums. Museums that are very
| bespoke and/or focused on a narrower curation target, etc.
| kjellsbells wrote:
| In the US, these museums can be brilliant, terrifyingly
| creepy, and everything in between.
|
| I went to one in a tiny town in southern Arkansas a few years
| ago, dedicated to a river boat disaster shortly after the
| civil war. It was tiny, weird, and brilliant.
|
| https://www.sultanadisastermuseum.com/
| JohnFen wrote:
| Even in large metro areas, there tend to be small specialty
| museums. The problem is that if you don't know they're there
| already, you're not likely to find them.
| msisk6 wrote:
| Yes, very much so. Some of the interesting small rural
| museums across the western US I've been to include:
|
| * Museum of the Fur Trade near Chadron, Nebraska * The Santa
| Fe Trail Center near Larned, Kansas * Ash Fork Route 66
| Museum in Ash Fork, Arizona * National Mining Hall of Fame
| and Museum in Leadville, Colorado * American Windmill Museum
| in Lubbock, Texas * Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum
| near Ashland, Nebraska
|
| The rural US has many local museums and most are surprisingly
| well done and very informative.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Don't think it's city/rural thing or a big city/little city
| thing. Los Angeles has dozens of tiny museums, often
| dedicated to obscure subjects (printing, neon art, Jurassic
| technology), and also some huge and rather well known ones
| (LACMA, the Getty).
| syntheticnature wrote:
| Some of this relates to being able to pay staff; there are some
| house-museums about, but they tend to collapse all too readily
| as it turns out it's mostly someone's passion project -- just
| like this, but at a smaller scale.
| thriftwy wrote:
| I imagine they could be donated to local Department of
| Culture (is it Arts Council in case of Bay Area?) and then
| staffed by some retiree grannies. Then they will outlive the
| initial passion. Bureaucratic systems have their
| disadvantaged but they're good at keeping things going on.
| slashdave wrote:
| Are you calling the exploratorium a "large theme park of a
| museum"? Haven't been to the new venue, but it is anything
| besides commercial.
|
| https://www.exploratorium.edu/
| cpcallen wrote:
| I would. The new building is huge and tickets are $30 for
| kids and $40 for adults (though I suspect that many of the
| visitors get discounted or free admission because their
| employers are corporate sponsors). It's still one of the most
| wonderful places in the world but it's a world away from the
| hundreds of small local museums in the UK which might charge
| as little as PS2 to visit a handful of rooms displaying e.g.
| artifacts telling the history of the local area.
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| Is there any good uk computer museum, other than the
| cambridge one I am planning to visit? Just hope the brits
| is better in maintaining its legacy. I saw at least 2
| European museum mentioned here.
| VonGuard wrote:
| You missed the museums you're talking about. There are a ton of
| small museums in the Bay Area, from themade.org to the American
| Bookbinders Museum in SF. Non-profits are also expected to
| donate all their assets to other non-profits if they fold, here
| in CA. It's mandated in your articles of incorporation.
| Themade.org, which I can speak to, has always promised its
| stuff to Stanford or the CHM if it went under, though
| thankfully, we've survived COVID and are thriving.
| spaceguillotine wrote:
| Paul Allen sure didn't have great foresight for post death. First
| Cinerama and now the computer museum. The current sentiment with
| seattle lifers is that he used Seattle as a playground and didn't
| actually care about the longevity.
|
| EMP now MoPop just keeps hanging on by a thread as well and has
| gone through lots of turmoil.
| walterbell wrote:
| Not just billionaires. Gov-funded Ontario Science Centre, which
| helped to motivate thousands of science museums globally since
| 1969, hosting 50 million visitors, is being shut down,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40752904
| RobotToaster wrote:
| I'm guessing covid lockdowns crashed their visitor numbers?
| foldor wrote:
| Unfortunately not in this case. It's a kind of political
| issue right now with the current provincial government, and
| it's looking a lot like greed got in the way since it is in
| a prime location.
| walterbell wrote:
| _> it is in a prime location_
|
| Justifying the adjacent "Science Center" subway station,
| increasing real estate value of the science museum land.
| If the land was going to be auctioned to the highest
| bidder, a tech company consortium could have bid for the
| opportunity to protect this science student feeder of
| US/Canada university and industry tech talent.
|
| Instead of Ontario Science Center, why not
| Apple/Bell/Google/Rogers/Samsung/Shopify or even Toronto
| Science Center, if that would forestall destruction of a
| priceless historical landmark? Same principle for the
| Living Computer Museum, why not Amazon/Microsoft/Valve
| Living Computer Museum?
| rvba wrote:
| Because companies are there to make money, especially
| those owned mostly by nameless shareholders and run by
| committee.
|
| And this "brand building" that you describe here has
| basically zero return on investment.
|
| Of course some company - proablably a private one (not
| public), could invest into it, but if you want to burn
| money on something your CEO likes or the owners like, you
| can use other ideas like paying millions to put your logo
| on soccer tshirts for hundreds of millions. Or hosting a
| forum ;)
|
| On a side note, I worked in a company that paid a lot of
| money for golf sponsorships and couldnt figure out why
| this "marketing" does not work in countries where nobody
| plays golf. I think they still havent figured out that
| there are countries outside of USA.
| walterbell wrote:
| 250,000 students a year benefit from Ontario Science
| Center, the best of whom go onto the engineering and
| computer science programs of Canadian universities like U
| of Waterloo and U of Toronto, from where they are
| recruited by North American tech companies.
|
| _> zero return on investment_
|
| Any junior i-banker can produce a spreadsheet showing the
| lifetime labor value of high-quality technical talent
| educated at Canadian universities, many of whom are
| recruited to work for US technology companies.
|
| https://www.utoronto.ca/news/u-t-deep-learning-pioneer-
| geoff... When you translate a sentence
| using Google, or ask Siri to send a text, or play a song
| recommended by Spotify, you are using a technology that
| owes much to the innovative research of Geoffrey Hinton..
| "deep learning" - a form of artificial intelligence (AI)
| based on neural networks.. Hinton's revolutionary
| contributions to the field have earned him the nickname
| "the godfather of deep learning," and have made Canada a
| hotbed for high tech.. for his excellence as a global
| pioneer in deep learning, Hinton received a Doctor of
| Science, honoris causa from the University of Toronto,
| where he is a University Professor Emeritus.
|
| _> companies are there to make money_
|
| Nvidia agrees and invested in the future long before
| others. Thanks Geoff Hinton for planting seeds of science
| and money!
|
| Nvidia Science Centre?
| rvba wrote:
| Any junior banker can produce a spreadsheet for you that
| will claim anything you want - it is called Management
| Consulting.
|
| Anyway, since you know better how those big companies can
| invest, you can use your own money to reap the benefits.
| Money is literally lying on the street for you.
| walterbell wrote:
| There is a difference between investment banking and
| management consulting.
| dboreham wrote:
| Three zeros.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| I think that's too harsh. A lot of people have a blind spot to
| their own mortality. He died at 65, far before most people have
| their affairs in order.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| But he was given a diagnosis of cancer. It's not like he was
| hit by a bus. He had several months.
| bombcar wrote:
| Even for someone like Allen a few minutes with Quicken
| Willmaker would have been able to setup a trust to keep any
| of these things going in perpetuity.
|
| He likely didn't like thinking about it.
| JansjoFromIkea wrote:
| He had cancer decades ago and it came back a few times,
| didn't he?
|
| He probably convinced himself into thinking he wasn't going
| to die until it was too late, and things like this probably
| drop down to fairly low priority at that point.
|
| Not trying to excuse him though; if he actually cared he
| should've been thinking about it when he was opening the
| museum.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| He was lucky enough to have several _decades_.
|
| (His original diagnosis with Hodgkin's Lymphoma was in 1983
| according to Wikipedia. Most of the these projects in his
| life through 2018 were under the specter of that cancer.
| Even the complication of the additional non-Hodgkin's
| Lymphoma in 2009 still gave him possibly luckily a few
| _years_ to have handled some things.)
|
| Not that it makes it that much easier to deal with if you
| live that much time after a frightening diagnosis,
| especially because you likely can't know how much time you
| will actually have. But then again, none of us really know
| how much time we have. (How's your estate plan? Mine could
| use work.)
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Not really. Anyone that rich has financial advisors who will
| certainly bug them about that.
| dbish wrote:
| Sounds like he was onboard with shutting things down. It wasn't
| a foresight thing, more that he wasn't interested in it going
| on
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Yeah, Foundations with Endowments need business people to run
| them and manage them and finding ones you trust and creating
| a _corporate_ culture for them to last is hard. I can 't know
| for sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if Paul Allen wasn't
| interested in establishing those sorts of legacy foundations
| for some of the same corporate politics reasons he was said
| to have struggled with Microsoft over the decades.
| romwell wrote:
| Oh no! What a crying shame.
|
| This was one of my favorite museums _in the world_ , probably
| with no analogues.
|
| When I interned in Microsoft in 2014, I got to experience Seattle
| -- and the Living Computer Museum was one of the highlights of
| that experience.
|
| Simply being able to walk in and close-up something simple (say,
| Fibonacci sequence) on a typewriter terminal of the PDP-10 -- and
| then see _the typewriter type the output back to you on the same
| piece of paper_ was absolute magic (and a part of computing I
| wish we still had).
| kragen wrote:
| you know, you can plug a dot-matrix printer into a parallel
| port on a linux box and redirect stdout and stderr to that
| port. last time i did this was 27 years ago (my monitor had
| been broken in shipping, but i had an inkjet printer that
| printed text line by line), but it probably still works. i
| recall i had to telnet to localhost to get it to not be line-
| buffered, and you might have to hack that a different way
| nowadays
|
| around here office supply stores still sell fanfold paper and
| printer ribbons
|
| of course your linux box isn't a pdp-10, but that doesn't seem
| to be what you're missing
| craniumslows wrote:
| If you liked the Living Computer Museum then you may be
| interested in the https://icm.museum/ Interim Computer Museum.
| sva_ wrote:
| If you're ever close to Bonn, Germany, check Out the
| Artihmeum[0]. It starts at the top floor with the oldest
| "computers" and gets more modern as you walk down. They even
| have an original Enigma encryption machine.
|
| You can interact with some of them, but not all.
|
| 0. https://www.arithmeum.uni-bonn.de/
| endgame wrote:
| You're underselling it. The bottom floor has vintage hand-
| cranked calculators that you're allowed to compute with!
| esafak wrote:
| Why is it shutting down? I scanned the article but failed to find
| the reason.
| cdchn wrote:
| Estate liquidation.
| esafak wrote:
| I can't imagine they ran out of money, so I speculate that
| the executors simply did not want to maintain it.
| astrodust wrote:
| It's not their job to maintain it unless that was specified
| somehow in advance.
| kragen wrote:
| usually when someone's estate includes a business with
| employees, shutting it down and selling off its assets is
| not what the executors do. usually they keep the company
| running so they can get a reasonable sale price for the
| whole company
| daotoad wrote:
| The cinerama and the museum were shut down for Covid and
| just never came back.
|
| They found someone to take on the Cinerama. But the
| living computer museum was a taller order. Which is
| tragic because it was an unbelievably cool place. Being
| able to use a Xerox Alto and an orginal Microsoft Surface
| (the one built into a table) was a gift. It's sad that
| this won't be available for others in the future.
| jojobas wrote:
| I wonder why no trust fund has been set up to keep it
| going.
| mapmeld wrote:
| I don't think anyone has a solid public answer about why they
| didn't reopen with other museums after 2020. It might be too
| costly, people leaving the organization, etc. to the point that
| the board didn't think it could reopen.
| lobsterthief wrote:
| It required very specialized knowledge to keep those
| computers running so this is a very keen take
| algebra-pretext wrote:
| Around two months ago I stopped by the building and saw through a
| window that the interior seemed mostly untouched. So, out of
| concern for the condition of any items that may still be inside,
| I snooped around the perimeter looking for a way in until a very
| loud intercom told me to get off the property. Probably not the
| reason for this announcement but I can't help but feel partially
| responsible.
|
| The RE-PC vintage computing warehouse nearby also has a small
| museum with equipment going back to the 60s, you can't touch
| anything but other sections of the warehouse have plenty of 90s
| and 2000s desktops set up that you can play with. It's a good
| place to look for ancient cables, obscure controllers (I saw two
| SideWinders there last time), and older displays, I'm planning to
| go back to pick up the Apple Studio CRT
| https://everymac.com/monitors/apple/studio_cinema/specs/appl...
| lilyball wrote:
| > _So, out of concern for the condition of any items that may
| still be inside, I snooped around the perimeter looking for a
| way in_
|
| How does concern for the items inside lead you to looking for a
| way to break in?
| kragen wrote:
| if the building is unguarded and full of valuable items,
| someone will loot it. if you're the one that loots it, you
| get to decide what happens to them. if you don't, someone
| else will
| squigz wrote:
| I love HN morality takes.
| lobsterthief wrote:
| I'm sorry but that's a terrible take
|
| > Someone else might loot it, and they could do who knows
| what with it, so I'll loot it instead
| kragen wrote:
| it's obviously self-serving and can be used to justify
| just about any act
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Bad take, unsolicited pentesting can be a net positive
| without being exploitative.
| kragen wrote:
| it can be used to justify good acts too, not just bad
| ones
| sandwitches wrote:
| Shhh, you said the quiet part out loud!
| Aeolun wrote:
| Question to see if they're not being neglected? It wouldn't
| be the first financially failed museum that thinks just
| letting the building fall into disrepair is a cheap way of
| getting rid of their collection.
| sparky_z wrote:
| They didn't say they intended to break in, they said they
| looked to see if there was a way to break in. If they could
| see a way, then so could anyone else, which would suggest
| that they aren't being protected. No actual ingress needed to
| come to that conclusion.
|
| That's my maximally charitable take, at any rate.
| spullara wrote:
| How about donating them to the Computer History Museum in SV?
| ertian wrote:
| They probably can't, for the same reason it's not going to stay
| open: it wasn't specified in the will what to do with the LCM,
| and it _does_ specifically say that the default is to
| liquidate.
| dang wrote:
| Related: http://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2024/06/the-living-computers-
| muse...
|
| (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40802686 but we merged
| those comments hither)
| devwastaken wrote:
| I've wanted to get my hands on an IBM or other with an orange
| plasma display for a while. Or really any old terminal. It's
| funny because buying them is very expensive, but places
| showcasing them are few now.
| shrubble wrote:
| The Toshiba luggables T3100 / T5x00 with gas plasma display are
| still around; as are the Compaq luggables as well.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| You could have had them for free (or nearly) when computing
| centers were getting rid of them in the 1990s.
| TobinCavanaugh wrote:
| Bummer, this place was a bunch of fun
| araes wrote:
| Surprising. Visited right before Covid, and it seemed rather
| popular. Children wandering around playing with exhibits. Would
| have not expected a place like that to go under. Think every
| floor had maybe 10? folks while I was there.
|
| Really one of the better hands-on museums with the "lab"
| component. Had lots of neat digital wall displays to play with,
| and programmable science toys.
|
| Only downside was location. Tried walking cause I had no idea
| where it really was, and super-quick realized it was _way_ past
| the coliseum and almost down to the badlands warehouse district
| by the freight harbor. Right between the railyards. Bad mental
| model of Seattle distances. Signage was also really difficult to
| spot. https://maps.app.goo.gl/SPCCJhT7B9aBfANNA Can you even tell
| there's a museum there?
|
| Weird part from my own perspective, is Gate's runs a non-profit
| in his spare time as a hobby(?). Even if they weren't best-bros
| afterward, it would still take something like finger wagging to a
| functionary to not have this be a PR dumpster fire.
| BobAliceInATree wrote:
| The sad reality is that you can spend a lifetime collecting
| something, the but likelihood that any of your potential heirs is
| also interested in it, is pretty close to zero. That's true of
| multi-million dollar vintage computers, or your childhood stamp
| collection that's mostly worthless. Paul's mistake was not
| properly establishing a foundation & endowment to maintain this
| musuem, which almost certainly leaks lots of money.
|
| I personally have a decent art collection that I've amassed over
| the past couple decades. I have a few pieces earmarked in my will
| to specific friends & family that have really liked certain
| pieces (they don't know), but the reality is that my estate
| executor is going to sell the vast majority of it, and at 50C/ on
| the dollar of what I paid.
| bombcar wrote:
| You're not going to get 50 cents if I know anything about it.
|
| Maybe if you started selling today you could get that, an
| estate auction will get a few pennies.
| BobAliceInATree wrote:
| A few of my pieces are quite desirable and valuable, most of
| them not. I looked at the numbers, and all together 40-50% of
| what I paid is the ballpark of today's value, not including
| any consignment fees.
| bruce511 wrote:
| I've said this before, and for you I'm assuming there's no
| rush, but the best person to sell the "valuable" part of
| the collection is you.
|
| Now granted, most collections are not art - so I'm assuming
| you gave fewer distinct pieces than say stamps.
|
| My dad had a serious stamp collection. Had he died with it
| complete, we would have sold it for a few $ to a dealer.
| The cost of (him or us) going through it to find "the good
| stuff would be too high.
|
| Take your art. Unless you've cataloged it, had it
| appraised, and keep that updated every few years, your
| heirs will likely just sell it as a job-lot to a dealer.
| Given his costs, and risks, he'll pick a small number (like
| $50 per). Your Rembrant is his to find.
|
| What my dad did was sell off the expensive stuff himself
| before he died (and told us). He knew what he had, and
| where to find it. (He discovered that selling is different
| to buying, but that's another thread). At least we knew
| that what was left was basically worthless and we could
| donate it with a clear conscience.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > He discovered that selling is different to buying, but
| that's another thread
|
| You got me curious...
| brudgers wrote:
| [I'm not the person who said it.]
|
| Sellers don't control when a sale will happen in the ways
| buyers do. Once you decide to buy you can -- assuming the
| item is already for sale.
|
| That already for sale part is the difference. Sales have
| lead times. Even at fire sale prices the decision to sell
| precedes someone buying. It takes time for the right
| person to find your item.
|
| Pricing and advertising and marketing can help. But they
| don't force the timing of a sale.
| bruce511 wrote:
| When collecting there's a selling price and a buying
| price. The difference can be -substantial-.
|
| For example, stamps have a catalog. Literally a giant
| book, with all the stamps and variations, and the current
| value. (Ahem, buying value). Think if it as a giant
| "vendor neutral" price guide. [1]
|
| Now obviously when you come to sell you mostly sell to a
| dealer. So you expect him to take some margin. He has to
| make a living. But the margin they expect will make your
| eyes water. (50% to 90% is common). Do test $100 stamp
| you have is say $10.
|
| But eBay- sell direct. Sure you get more. But still a lot
| less than book value (partly because scams etc makes eBay
| risky for good stuff.) And it's it's lot of extra work.
| Useful for one or two pieces, less useful for 50. (And,
| of course, scams happen in both directions.)
|
| That's if you know what you have. Selling someone else's
| collection on eBay when you don't know what you have is
| equally tricky.
|
| In short, collections are expensive to acquire and hard
| to get rid of. The value in collecting is the joy of
| acquiring and having. Collections are (with rare
| exceptions) not a financial investment.
|
| [1] my insight into stamp collecting died 20 years ago,
| so I'm guessing this catalog is online now.
| Kaijo wrote:
| I'm a lifelong collector of a variety of (very) niche
| things, and have at times sold or tried to sell items
| from my collections, or whole collections at once. You're
| right about everything, I would only add that each
| category of thing is its own world in terms of liquidity
| and how certain you can be of obtaining a guide price. It
| also pays off to learn about the collector cultures and
| communities surrounding each type of thing, so you know
| what obscure periodical or special interest show, etc. to
| target when you are trying to sell. Never be in a rush,
| and the other thing that can make a difference is
| developing good product photography/videography skills.
| bombcar wrote:
| Sometimes the best thing you can do with a collection is
| bequeath it to someone in the hobby who's much younger.
| bruce511 wrote:
| Weeel.. maybe. The joy in collecting is the collecting.
| Getting it all at once kinda robs the fun..
|
| But bequething them one or two significant pieces can get
| them started, and perhaps carries more meaning...
| brudgers wrote:
| Patient buyers are another characteristic of long tail
| markets on eBay.
|
| The pool of stamp collectors etc. is small relative to
| say guitar players; there's not an endless September; and
| buying from dealers is the "socially acceptable" way of
| starting.
|
| So potential buyers on eBay tend to be experienced
| bargain shoppers when it comes to ordinary
| collectability. They will happily wait for the bragging
| rights price or at least the no way to lose money price.
|
| Collecting is a hobby. Picking is a business.
| BobAliceInATree wrote:
| I appreciate the advice. My collection is catalogued with
| what I paid and current-ish fair market values. The
| future executor will know which handful ones are worth
| consigning individually and at what galleries, and the
| rest will likely be bulk sold.
| bruce511 wrote:
| That's the way to do it! Mind you paintings are bigger
| than stamps so it feels like you're cheating.... :)
| ikiris wrote:
| Few is if they're lucky. More like 1.
| devilbunny wrote:
| I have bought a lot of stuff at estate auctions. Yeah, a
| generic estate sale will not generate a lot of money, but if
| you have serious art (i.e., it would sell to more than a
| local audience), it can bring in quite a bit. I saw an Alan
| Bean (the astronaut) painting at one; ended up going for over
| $30k. And the estate gets all of that; the auction house
| charges a premium (in this case, 25%) paid by the buyer, but
| the official auction price is what the seller gets.
| intrasight wrote:
| The liquidation value of the average middle-class house is
| $10k - according to my divorce attorney.
| fl7305 wrote:
| $10k sounds high to me if we're talking about home
| electronics, furniture, etc?
|
| Do people have a lot of expensive jewelry that's
| included, or does it include vehicles?
| bombcar wrote:
| If we're talking the contents, you can get to $10k pretty
| easily, think appliances (a hundred or so each), laptops,
| stereo, etc.
|
| If you held a garage sale today and let people go
| throughout your entire house, you could probably net
| $10k.
| devilbunny wrote:
| The ones I'm talking about are definitely not middle
| class.
| 9659 wrote:
| Personal collections are for enjoyment, not investment.
|
| I liquidated some of my fathers things for effectively nothing.
| That he spent decades acquiring.
| femto wrote:
| That can be a good outcome if things go to someone who values
| them as much as the original owner.
|
| My Dad had a collectable car. We sold it for a fair price to
| an enthusiast who drives it, looks after it and keeps in in a
| public museum when it's not being driven. That was a good
| outcome. Better than someone in the family hoarding it and
| letting it deteriorate.
|
| The money was immaterial, main reason for asking a fair price
| was to discourage someone who didn't value the car from
| flipping it for a tidy profit. We were also lucky, in that a
| member of Dad's car club was prepared to vet buyers for us.
|
| Disbanding a closed computer museum isn't a bad thing if the
| items go to others who will value and display them.
| klyrs wrote:
| A collectable car is one thing. A bevy of collectable
| figurines, another thing all together.
| dbish wrote:
| In this case he didn't have heirs and seems to have asked in
| his will to auction it off instead of endowing it.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| Is there any value to a museum for that art?
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| My Dad collected antique cap guns. By the "collector's bible"
| its "worth" $40 - $50 grand. He got zero offers for it when it
| became clear he needed to liquidate some of his "stuff" to pay
| for health care. So yeah, I don't think my collection of
| "classic" computers will return anything to my heirs sadly.
| fl7305 wrote:
| Well, I see classic 1970s-80s computers that I'm interested
| in selling for hundreds or even thousands of dollars on eBay
| etc.
|
| Gen-Xers who grew up with them are getting nostalgic, and
| many of them have a lot of disposable income and plenty of
| space to house them.
|
| But it is a lot of work to get that kind of money for each
| individual machine. And I suspect it will be a passing fad.
| In some decades when the Gen-Xers start to log out, the
| younger generations will not sustain the same kind of market.
| rjsw wrote:
| I wonder if anyone is buying them at those prices though.
|
| I collected a few machines when they were either being
| given away at work or nearly given away on eBay.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Computer prices are a bathtub curve for interesting
| computers. Very expensive at the start, then they're
| worthless garbage for 10-40 years, then prices start to
| rise. If it's not interesting, then they just stay
| worthless.
|
| Examples:
|
| - Supercomputer parts
|
| - SGI, HP 9000, Sun SPARC machines and parts
|
| - More esoteric UNIX workstations
|
| - PDPs
|
| - VAXen (how many complete cabinet-style VAXen still
| exist?)
|
| - Apples
|
| - Terminals (since almost all of these were tossed, these
| are surprisingly expensive even in bad condition)
| ghaff wrote:
| And probably need to be in pretty mint condition and find
| the right buyers. Nothing I have is mint and I wouldn't
| even try to sell it. The minicomputer boards are from a
| once major minicomputer maker but very few people have
| probably even heard of them today.
| fl7305 wrote:
| Like the other poster wrote, it is time dependent.
|
| The stuff that went into dumpsters in the 1990s can sell
| for thousands today on eBay. But in 30 years, they might
| be dumpster bound again.
|
| I just double checked to make sure, and an Atari Falcon
| early 1990s 68030 CPU computer sells for around $3000
| today.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| The problem is it's only valuable to those who hold value
| to it because they grew up with it. Once those collectors
| get old and start dying off, the bottom falls out of the
| market because subsequent generations don't have the same
| nostalgia. and thus those once valuable collectibles are
| then basically worthless.
|
| I have first hand experience of this happening too. My dad
| collected a specific type of model railway. His collection
| used to be worth thousands but by the time I inherited it
| all the other collectors were also dead and neither myself
| nor my brother wanted to maintain the collection. So we
| sold it for practically nothing.
|
| Dad would be turning in his grave if he knew but frankly,
| he was the only person who had sentimental value to that
| collection and we needed the space. It wasn't even about
| the money for us, it was literally just multiple boxes of
| stuff we knew we wouldn't ever use and didn't want to keep
| indefinitely just to honour the memory of dad (we have far
| better ways to honour his memory).
|
| This isn't meant to sound insensitive because I loved my
| dad and still miss him a lot.
|
| I have a large collection of retro gaming consoles and 8
| and 16 bit computers. Plus hundreds of games on physical
| media. I love my collection just like my dad loved his
| trains. But I know my family will sell it for a pittance
| the moment I pass away. And I'm fine with that. I own it
| because it brings me pleasure. I didn't buy it thinking my
| family should honour my legacy by hoarding it too.
| bdjsiqoocwk wrote:
| This is sad because it's true. Thank you for writing
| this.
| ghaff wrote:
| I enjoyed stamp collecting as a kid. I inherited a stamp
| album from a distant relative who I think was a clipper
| ship captain or something along those lines. Was probably
| worth some money once upon a time. I should look at it
| one of these days. I'm sure it (and my own collection)
| are worth nothing today.
| Basketb926 wrote:
| Easy thing to do with Unwanted Stamps is Donate to Oxfam
| Canada. Address to mail your donation to is at this link:
| https://www.oxfam.ca/take-action/support-oxfam/stamp-out-
| pov...
| BobAliceInATree wrote:
| Yeah, I'm really nostalgic for 90s era computer & gaming
| stuff -- turns out, that stuff is pretty expensive right
| now cause all of us that grew up with it have the
| disposable income to re-buy it. 30-40 years from now when
| we're all dying & downsizing? I'm sure that market will
| crater.
| ilamont wrote:
| We've seen this play out before. This couple in Wisconsin
| stocked up on antique phones when the demand was hot in the
| 1980s, now they are in their 80s and they can't get rid of
| them:
|
| https://madison.com/news/local/phoneco-wisconsin-
| telephones-...
| rekabis wrote:
| They should advertise up here in Canada. Functional
| rotary phones are selling like hotcakes for $50-80 a pop.
| Especially original non-standard (not-black) colours.
| deafpolygon wrote:
| This is one of the reasons why I avoid "collecting" anything.
| (Another is space, maintenance, etc.)
|
| There's just not much point, unless you absolutely love
| something. But many people collect with the end-game of making
| a profit, which is a mistake.
| imperfect_light wrote:
| > but likelihood that any of your potential heirs is also
| interested in it
|
| That's not the issue, he set up the parts of his empire he
| cared about so they'd live on (Allen Institute for example) and
| instructed his sister to sell the rest. She could have gone
| against his instructions, but the point is he clearly he didn't
| care whether the Cinerama or the Living Computer Museum
| continued on. That's on him, not his heirs.
|
| The fact that no other Seattle-adjacent computer billionaires
| like Gates, Bezos, Simonyi, Ballmer has offered to continue it
| just shows the generally low quality of people that have gotten
| rich from tech.
| ghaff wrote:
| Or the fact that they don't see maintaining a home for a
| bunch of old computers for people to look at is a priority
| given other museums and world needs.
| imperfect_light wrote:
| It's not like there's a shortage of money for art museums
| or natural history museums, but we do seem to be closing
| museums (this one and previously the Boston one) detailing
| the history of one of the biggest innovations in human
| history.
|
| When you say "world needs" you mean sports teams and
| personal space travel? It's safe to say all of them have
| plenty of money to save this small museum and still fund
| their hobbies and causes.
| ghaff wrote:
| They depend on people actually willing to pay to support
| them. Both through donations and admissions.
| jl6 wrote:
| The issue with estate sales is that they are usually estate
| _disposals_. People inheriting their parents' stuff are usually
| themselves grown adults with their own busy lives, and the
| average estate consists of _immense amounts of clutter_ that
| the inheritor has approximately zero interest in. They're
| grieving, they're seeking closure. Not looking to spend years
| sifting through hundreds of thousands of items of household
| bric-a-brac looking to extract value. They want your house
| cleared so they can sell it and hopefully pay off a bit of
| their own mortgage.
| ZaoLahma wrote:
| This is all sadly too true, which is why I think we should do
| our best to declutter as we age. Ideally when our time comes,
| we should only have things of immediate use and value to us
| left, and pretty much none of "might be good to have one
| day".
|
| I've seen instances where people couldn't get rid of things
| due to grief and decided to keep it all tucked away for
| several decades, leaving the decluttering to the following
| generation(s). Better then to be a bit proactive.
| badgersnake wrote:
| I'm sure if somebody came along with a serious offer for the
| collection with the goal of exhibiting it somewhere else it
| would be accepted.
| ghaff wrote:
| Well, yes. But that assumes someone with the capital and
| interest in kicking off a probably money-losing museum.
| After all, another computer museum with some significant
| holdings also went out of business 20-30 years ago. Silicon
| Valley is not unique but computers and other industrial
| artifacts are just not what most people have in mind when
| they're looking for a museum to go to.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| Reminds me of the guy (Ken Fritz) who built a $1M listening
| room that his kids sold for (essentially) parts after he died.
|
| > The total take for the million-dollar stereo system,
| including the speakers, the turntable, the dozens of other
| components from detached cones to the reel-to-reel decks?
| $156,800.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/interactive/2024/ken-fr...
|
| I don't blame them at all. It was his passion, not theirs.
| Fatnino wrote:
| There was a private tank collection in Portola Valley. There
| was a way to arrange tours but it didn't have anything like
| regular hours. It was just a guy with lots of money spending it
| on buying and restoring tanks. Most of them could run under
| their own power. Stuff like a German Tiger parked facing an
| American Sherman and a Russian T34. 2 huge garage fulls of
| these things. And visitors were allowed to climb onto and into
| all the tanks. It's how I learned that British tanks are
| righthand drive.
|
| Anyway, guy died, his heirs preferred money to tanks, and they
| all got sold off. At best they are on display somewhere on the
| east coast behind velvet rope where no one will touch or drive
| them again.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| There is a computer museum in Roswell, GA. Just north of Atlanta
| that is pretty neat. https://www.computermuseumofamerica.org/
| dpb001 wrote:
| I think CMoA acquired the contents of David Larsen's museum in
| Floyd, VA. Larsen was one of the authors of the Bugbook series
| and the museum was kind of a snapshot of the mid to late 70's
| micro scene. I'm glad the Apple I didn't end up in a Goodwill
| bin somewhere.
| kragen wrote:
| this is pretty unfortunate. iirc they had the only digital pdp-10
| in the world that's currently in working order -- the line of
| computers on which emacs, microsoft basic, simtel-20, and
| compuserve all originated. most of the arpanet was pdp-10s at one
| time. nasa's gsfc spacelink ftp site, where you could download
| space photos, was the only one i ever encountered running
|
| hopefully that machine will find a good home in the auction and
| not be destroyed in the process
|
| the fact that it's shut down is, as bobaliceinatree said, a
| terrible indictment of paul allen's estate planning. unless he
| just didn't care about the people who survived him
| anthk wrote:
| At least you can run ITS under simh, there a github repo to set
| everything up almost automagically.
| kragen wrote:
| yes, and maybe xkl still makes pdp-10s, and kv10 may be ready
| soon. not sure what happened to conroy's pdp-10/x hdl. but
| there is value in artifacts too
| Suzuran wrote:
| Very far from the only working one. I have a working one, for
| now, but we don't know how much longer I will be here because I
| am currently dying from a government paperwork error that
| nobody in government has the authority to fix.
| tomcam wrote:
| Holy cow. What happened?
| Suzuran wrote:
| Long story short, my Medicare records got screwed up. Some
| database entry isn't in the correct state that allows their
| processes to proceed. None of the humans I can get in
| contact with has the authority (or knows anyone with the
| authority) to manually correct the record, because that
| would be outside of their processes. Since the record isn't
| in a valid state, my access to medications I need to stay
| alive is being cut off. The retail cost of the just one of
| the medications is more than 100% of my income.
| maxwell wrote:
| Have you sued DHHS / CMS?
| Suzuran wrote:
| No; It is my understanding you cannot sue the federal
| government or its constituent parts, they have sovereign
| immunity.
| kragen wrote:
| they have to assert it in court and usually don't
| maxwell wrote:
| I would never join a cartel like the American Bar
| Foundation myself, but that's not my understanding.
|
| https://www.aarp.org/health/medicare-
| insurance/info-2020/obs...
|
| I hope you all the best. We live in a Second World
| country.
| kragen wrote:
| can you buy it from overseas mail order pharmacies, by
| driving to mexico, on darknet markets, or on alibaba?
| Suzuran wrote:
| Currently looking into overseas mail-order. I'm too far
| from Mexico or Canada to drive there; I haven't
| considered darknet/alibaba because if I get sold a fake,
| I won't be able to tell without lab tests, and I can't
| afford the lab tests. There's also some concern that by
| the time I have negative lab results that would indicate
| a fake it may be too late to save the kidney anyway.
| kragen wrote:
| best of luck
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Have you contacted your US senator or US representative?
| They can often clear up these kinds of issues by locating
| the single person in government that you actually need to
| talk to.
| Suzuran wrote:
| The Medicare people advised this as well. I have
| attempted to contact my Congressional representative, but
| have not received an answer yet.
| kjellsbells wrote:
| I wonder what would happen if you contacted your
| representative's political opponent, esp this being an
| election year. You might be able to use the leverage from
| the opponent to make the incumbent fix the problem.
| kragen wrote:
| thank you for the correction
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I took the photos for the cover of my first book on an Alto that
| was rescued from the museum. This was when it was "closed for the
| pandemic."
|
| Anyhow, this guy had two working Altos in his basement in
| Bothell.
| picometer wrote:
| The museum was also a generous community space; I remember
| attending a Seattle Indies game jam and other events before the
| pandemic. It was very special to be surrounded by reminders of
| early-computing exploratory spirit.
| kelsey98765431 wrote:
| rest in peace, thank you for giving me the memory of what root on
| an '11 felt like for dms, and a little of that all asm love for
| the single cve. Someday i will write it a sister and publish in
| TLCHM memory. farewell friend and thank you for the fish
| alchemist1e9 wrote:
| When is the auction? Anyone have the details available?
| kens wrote:
| The items are being auctioned by Christie's, closing Sept 12.
| The webpage gives very little information at this time:
| https://www.christies.com/stories/gen-one-paul-allen-history...
| notlisted wrote:
| I haven't had the pleasure to visit this specific museum, but I
| did manage to visit https://www.homecomputermuseum.nl/en/ in my
| native country of The Netherlands on my last trip to Europe, and
| it's a real gem, also allowing hands-on interaction. I also
| "adopted" my first PC.
|
| (for those familiar with The Netherlands, it's located in
| Helmond)
| mepian wrote:
| Apres moi, le deluge?
| peatmoss wrote:
| Damn, this is a gut punch. I used to love this place. Just
| hanging out with the old systems was a flood of nostalgia and
| good memories.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _Marc Porter, chairman of Christie's Americas, said in a
| statement that the market has never seen such a diverse
| collection "that so beautifully chronicles the history of human
| science and technological ingenuity -- much less one assembled by
| a founding father of modern computing."_
|
| These honeyed words ring deeply hypocritical when you consider
| Christie's sees the collection purely as an asset capable of
| yielding a significant commission once sold.
|
| _The closure came as the estate began to deal with a number of
| properties that no longer had a billionaire benefactor to help
| keep the doors open, and in line with what the estate says was
| Allen's desire to sell his assets after his passing._
|
| I wonder about this. If someone has made a vast fortune in
| technology, retired from that field to take up philanthropy,
| built a museum to share the benefits of their experience and
| insight with the next generation, it seems rather unlikely to me
| that their greatest posthumous aspiration is to have it
| dismantled and dispersed.
|
| I find the auction of assets like fine art (also mentioned in the
| article) easier to understand as art collections are semi-
| ephemeral and the trading and circulation of fine art among the
| wealthy has been going on for many centuries. But it also strikes
| me that having raised $1.6 billion by selling off the art, the
| estate is not exactly short of funds to keep the museum
| functioning.
| rtpg wrote:
| I was lucky enough to go to this in 2019 (thanks Gary for
| organizing Deconstruct right at the moment in my life where I
| could make the trip!), and honestly it was _so motivating_.
|
| There's obviously some nostalgia, but seeing a bunch of machines
| with self-contained tooling and in working order, that you could
| goof around in with people around you was so satisfying.
|
| I get the complications of running all of that stack, but a part
| of me would be hopeful for some systemic reproductions of some
| environments. Something like a "mini Windows 98" with 10 games or
| so and that copy of QBASIC and some VB.
| aamargulies wrote:
| Perhaps this is a case of the opposite of love being indifference
| not hate.
| jmward01 wrote:
| The best living computer museum I ever went to was The Weirdstuff
| Warehouse. Between it and Fry's I had everything I needed. It is
| too bad this is closing down, but then again it is hard to keep
| everything from the past and still move forward.
| jmpman wrote:
| So, what is the estate going to do with that money? Surely the
| family has billions they will never be able to spend, but they
| must liquidate everything that Paul built and loved?
| sidvit wrote:
| Well, everything except the professional football team and the
| basketball team oh and also the giant real estate company. All
| of the stuff that generates lots and lots of money, which seems
| like you would want to sell for your trusts big philanthropic
| mission to have the greatest impact.
| brianjking wrote:
| This is so sad, Living Computer Museum was one of the best places
| I've ever been.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| This is so sad for me on so many levels. Not the least of which
| that I came very very close to giving them my PDP-5 because they
| would keep it running and the curator at the time gave the
| impression that Paul was setting up a trust to keep the Museum
| operating (which he could have, but did not).
|
| Guess his heirs would rather have his billions than his legacy.
| mulmen wrote:
| > Guess his heirs would rather have his billions than his
| legacy.
|
| I think it is unfair to blame his heir when based on all the
| information we have his wish was to liquidate the estate and
| donate the proceeds to charity. His heir doesn't personally
| benefit financially from this auction.
|
| He could have set up an endowment to keep the museum going. He
| didn't. That's not the executor's fault.
| atlgator wrote:
| Send the inventory to the Computer Museum of America (Roswell,
| GA)
| musicale wrote:
| It's a shame that there isn't a computing company near Seattle
| that could fund it or revive it.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I wish another area group formed to reopen the museum and acquire
| lots. I assume they tried and those who made so much from the
| computers success had so little interest in keeping that history
| living.
|
| I don't blame the sister as many do, I realize it's his wish
| actually. And in some ways it's the way it should be. The people
| who love the computer should keep the museum around. It's just a
| shame so many wealthy tech people don't have that love.
| vinc wrote:
| It's a very sad news.
|
| I'm from Europe and I've never been to the States, but I loved
| the remote access to the Living Computers Museum. I'd often do
| `ssh menu@tty.livingcomputers.org` to see what was up. I'm glad
| to see that this will now be `ssh menu@tty.sdf.org`. Will it only
| be emulators or will there be some real computers?
| ColinWright wrote:
| David Singmaster, author of the first book on how to solve the
| Rubik Cube, had a vast collection of mathematical books, papers,
| ephemera, and a _huge_ collection of twisty puzzles, and other
| puzzles.
|
| His wish was that it remain in the UK, and he really, _really_
| wanted it to stay as a collection. But it 's effectively
| impossible.
|
| Collections, even significant collections[0], are hard to keep
| together. I wish I had the money necessary to acquire and make
| accessible collections like this.
|
| [0] I'm not saying David's collection is significant, but it is
| substantial, and contains _many_ things potentially of interest.
| wakeneddreamer wrote:
| Alliance Bernstein published a white paper about transferring
| ones collection and preserving value
|
| http://bernstein.com/our-insights/insights/2024/whitepaper/c...
| RGamma wrote:
| That said, some collector's items only gain value much later.
| Think 200+ yo stuff. Kinda need several generations to hold on to
| it though.
| banish-m4 wrote:
| Whaaa? Maybe they should donate to, I don't know, the Computer
| History Museum rather than allow speculative collectors to pick
| the bones of historical artifacts.
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