Museum Computers (was Re: Washington D.C. Trip

The Exploratorium devotes a fairly large amount of resources to exhibit maintenance, so they have more operational exhibits than most museums of their type. As to making stronger I/O devices, the first thing you need to do is observe a bunch of grade school/middle school kids when they come to a computer in a museum exhibit: they don't look at what they are supposed to do, they just start _pounding_ on the keyboard/input. What we did at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago (where I designed and programmed 10+ computer "interactives" for exhibits in the early 90's) was to use arcade-game trackballs and switches made by Happ Controls. At the time we started, these trackballs were not PC compatible. They did use standard slotted wheel sensors, though, so I just desoldered the sensors from the circuit board of an inexpensive Microsoft compatible mouse and ran wires to the sensors on the trackball instead. The mouse switches were also removed and wired to separate game-unit buttons. I made the first interface about 10 years ago, and I am still using it (at this very moment, in fact, hooked to an IBM laptop.) It's in a big foam-core box (10x9x4 inches), so it is not the sharpest looking thing, but it has never given me any trouble in 10 years of use. (Try that with a mouse!) Some museums use touch screens, but at that time, we could not find any that were reliable enough and precise enough. I later did a game fro the Brookfield Zoo that used a touch screen, but needed to use large on-screen "buttons" with good separation to get reliable picking. Using a trackball for input means that any character/numeric input must be done through on-screen selection, which is a bit klunky, but better than having a non-working exhibit. The one program that used (and still uses) keyboard input is the "Voyaging Game" located in the back of the Pacific exhibit (a dark and quiet area). It has benches in front of the screens for the users to sit at. Here, in a more tranquil setting, the visitors do not pound on the keyboards, so they have survived fairly well. (They even survived having holes drilled through them, when some exhibit installers mounted a label on the case surface above the keyboard, and drilled too far!) The biggest problem is someone will occassionally pop off a keycap, even though they are recessed in the case. -----Original Message----- From: Mike Cheponis [mailto:mac@Wireless.Com] Sent: Thursday, May 31, 2001 12:05 PM To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org Subject: Re: Museum Computers (was Re: Washington D.C. Trip Perhaps these so-called "museums" need to visit SF's Exploratorium? There, everything is meant to be "hands-on". This doesn't mean that things don't break from time to time, but the percentage of operational exhibits there is greater than any other public museum I've seen. Mind you, I'm not saying people should put an Eniac cabinet out where people can slobber over it, but I think it would be cool to be able to remote-control these older machines (I dunno, like a 360/50 or something) via modern interfaces - safely away from the original equipment, but yet behind glass - so you can see the original machine running. So yeah, Chuck, I agree! -Mike On Thu, 31 May 2001, Chuck McManis wrote: over that up