Collection list (just for phun)

I remember the Icons well from my school days. I have a semi-serious belief that the Ontario government and/or the Toronto Board of Education has attempted to erase all evidence that the Icon ever existed. For those who didn't grow up in Southern Ontario, the Icon project was an ambitious early attempt to put a computer in every school. Unfortunately, it was sabotaged by the politically motivated insistence on a "made in Canada" solution. A consortium was put together that created proprietary hardware running a Unix variant (years before Linux put Unix in the mainstream). In a world rapidly being swamped by the enthusiasm and high hopes of the "Home Computing" revolution, where Commodore, Apple and Atari were king, the Icon was a costly failure. It limped along for a few years, but once the government lost its initial enthusiasm for computer-assisted learning, the plug was quickly pulled. The last place I remember seeing an Icon was at the Ontario Science Centre, where they were used to run programs like Forest fire fighting simulations. I'd love to get one if I ever run across one.