27 May
2003
27 May
'03
7:01 a.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
I agree. The problem seems to be that many of the
traditional exhibits in
museums (fine art, archeology, etc) _are_ static objects and the
appearence is, in general all that matters and all that can be observed.
This is _not_ true of computers (or other scientific and
engineering-related objects), but the museums don't seem to realise this
and apply the same policies to all objects.
And worse to the categorisation and descritpion. We are in the process
of inventorying our collection, the PDP-9 is described as "a cabinet xx
cm tall, xx cm wide, xx cm deep with orange and black panels and an
operator console". That neatly describes a museums view of a PDP-9 !!
I am currently in a battle royal to get this point of view chamged.
Can somebody please explain to me why it is so
difficult to _learn_ these
skills? I will admit I've enver worked on a 1950's computer (the oldest
machine I've worked on dates from 1969 [1]), but I don't see why I'd find
it impossible given a little bit of time to learn the tricks that were
used then.
After all the folks in the 60's learnt their tricks from those that
worked in the 50's!
>This is clearly an issue we need to pass on these
skills to a younger
>generation. Here at ACONIT our goal is a conservatoire of computing
>history, hopefully as such it will perpetuate the skills needed. The
It's interesting that a small private computer
history group that I
belong to states its aims as 'preserving old computers, programs, methods
and operating practices as far as possible'. Clearly they think (as do I)
there's more that need to be preserved than just circuit boards :-)
An entirely rightly so!!!
I recently recoverd an entire PDP-9 OS thought long lost from three
DECtapes found in a batch of over 100. Had "policy" been applied at
least 90 of those tapes would have been trashed on the grounds that "we
already have ten of those".
-- hbp