17 Jul
2005
17 Jul
'05
9:51 p.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org
[mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Tony Duell
Sent: Sunday, July 17, 2005 12:57 PM
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: Need contact information for dkdkk
I certainly don't intend to operate our museum that way. So far I have not
had any visitors, that wanted to touch the equipment, but we don't have much
area to flounder around in anyway. If I have any documentation that I can
share then that would be great. We have a very nice Xerox copier that will
also function as a full duplex scanner. I can turn any loose-leaf document
into TIFF files with very little effort. I have not started doing that yet
but I will ADN. I will probably do documentation for our Four Phase IV/90
first since it is fairly rare. We can do books as well, but it is a lot more
work since we have to turn the pages and push the buttons. Anybody who would
like to stop by is more than welcome. I will let you scan anything we have
or that you have if you will let us keep a copy.
...
a billion dollars for doing nothing. Museums go
off and do their
stuff and the world never sees the results (if any) publicly. It
frustrates
This is something that annoys me too. Muesums acquire large
collections of machines, software and documentation which
then seems to be impossible to access. When I used to
volunteer at Bletchley, I was not allowed to look at their
documentation collection. OK, so I wanted some of the
information to repair my own machines, but so what? I was not
going to remove manuals permanently, or even temporarily. I
was not going to damage the manuals. I just wanted to look
something up. Agreed. I fool around with these old machines because
I enjoy
it. If I've helped one other person get a machien going, if
my home-made schematics have helped someone, or if I've just
encourages people to have a go, well that's enough for me.
But I'll keep on playing around anyway, because it's
something I enjoy doing.
...
I guess my motivation is more like education. Maybe that's why I finally
drifted into teaching. One brief example. During engineering week we put up
a display from our connection. A student dropped by with a coed on his arm
and asked about tab cards. I told him that we currently had a display in an
obscure location with signs, etc. It was a fairly good display with cards
from the WWII area, card boxes, mark sense cards,
System 3 cards, card
needles and card saws, various sizes of racks, a deck with a
stripe marked
across it, rubber bands, a card from a Yamaha loom and a tool to punch it
with, ...
http://www.cse.uta.edu/TheMuseum at CSE/OurDisplays.asp (Scroll down to the 4th
image.)
I figured that I would never hear back from him. But a couple of hours later
he wandered back by and told me that he checked it out and found it
impressive and informative. The computer field has changed so much in the
last 6 decades and most people have no idea about it. Students get a better
understanding when you show them the magnet from an older disk drive that
weighs about 50 pounds.
Gil
A. G. (Gil) Carrick, Director
The Museum at CSE
University of Texas at Arlington
Department of Computer Science & Engineering
Box 19015, 471 S Cooper Street
Arlington, TX 76019
817-272-3620
http://www.cse.uta.edu/TheMuseum at CSE/
-tony