At 19:13 22-06-98 +0100, ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote: Some of us, I'm quite sure, feel the same way Tony. This is a minor gripe of mine too. But take a close look at the people visiting a science museum any day (or actually, _any_ museum). Majority will not be anywhere near as technically informed as we are. Some of those folks are turned off. On the other hand, you'll *sometimes* see intense interest in a display or theme area as those folks may have had a long time interest in discovering more about that theme or are just curious to learn about anything. This is something we feel we will need to address in the AWA Electronic Communications Museum when we eventually undertake a relocation/reconstruction of our collection. I am on the Board of Trustees of the museum. I see the same interest/disinterest when I closely watch visitors to our museum. However, the majority of our visitors are usually more technically oriented and go out of their way to visit the museum. It is not a broad-range scientific museum like Deutches Museum, British Science Museum and the Smithsonian. We are essentially focused on early land-line telegraph and wireless communications from the first days in the 1840's up to, so far to now, the 1970's. Same thing could possibly be said for the Boston Computer Museum for example since they are like AWA Museum and not broad-ranged. I would guess that the more technically interested folks (like us) would head for that place rather than the non-technical tourists. Interactive experiments and hands-on displays serve to draw the interest of those disinterested visitors to a technical museum. That helps to get more and more people to visit because the relatively disinterested visitors do not talk to potential visitors in such negative terms. With that, the interest of those potential visitors is possibly increased to eventually bring them in. This helps the museum get more funding from admission fees which helps the museum continue to be open and maintain their displays. The interactive or hands-on displays can therefore be considered as part of the 'marketing' of the museum. You gotta sell it to 'em to make 'em come. Furthermore, a mission of nearly all museums, especially those that have public money for support, is to educate. Those hands-on/interactive experiments serve to satisfy the government agency responsible for ensuring that public money given to those museums 'Is for The Public Benefit'. When Sam Ismail opens his public museum and gets state or federal funding to help, he will likely have to provide some educational features in the museum that will take away from the space he'd want to use to show historical stuff. Hands-on/interactive experiments are a somewhat easy/low-maintenance/simple-to-design-and-make/stand-alone/unstaffed way to fulfill that requirement. Have any of you folks noticed that when you show your personal 'museum' to folks who normally are not into computers and that you demonstrate one or more simple aspects of computing on a working machine or just talk in simple terms about the history of same, those people show that they come away with just a bit more knowledge of those strange electronic boxes that have been a mystery to them. You have passed on a bit of knowledge to those visitors and you have fulfilled the general mission of nearly all museums around: to educate. Alas, many people have neither the means, knowledge, etc. to do that. Museums therefore serve that purpose. Question: Do many of you actively encourage folks (at least those you know or trust!) to visit you and your private collection who are not collectors/historians like us? If so, do you have fun teaching them a little about old computing (or old radios, automobiles, clocks or whatever your interest in addition to computers)? --Chris -- -- Christian Fandt, Electronic/Electrical Historian Jamestown, NY USA Member of Antique Wireless Association URL: http://www.ggw.org/freenet/a/awa/

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Sam Ismail wrote: Problem is, where you live it rains a fair amount, so much of the time you need to close the garage door. (Not as bad as our members up in OR and WA, but a lot more than in my old L.A. hometown [don't ask about the bloody weather here in New Jersey where I'm stuck until my father-in-law outlives me -- his family normally hits 90 {he's 79} and I'm 43 {and my family rarely hits 50}] but I'd love to move everything to the dry climate [it does snow some in Winter] of Wyoming). -- Ward Griffiths They say that politics makes strange bedfellows. Of course, the main reason they cuddle up is to screw somebody else. Michael Flynn, _Rogue Star_