24 Nov
1999
24 Nov
'99
12:15 p.m.
The Computer Museum seemed to engender a remarkable
amount of ill feeling
in the East, not alleviated by the flight of the collection from Boston.
Daq is the beneficiary of that great reservoir of suspicion and distrust.
He certainly has his work cut out for him, but being forthcoming and
addressing these concerns could go a long way towards settling them.
I would suggest that the move from boston cannot expect to have
reduced any ill feeling but increased it...
Megan Gentry
Former RT-11 Developer
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
| Megan Gentry, EMT/B, PP-ASEL | Internet (work): gentry!zk3.dec.com |
| Unix Support Engineering Group | (home): mbg!world.std.com |
| Compaq Computer Corporation | addresses need '@' in place of '!' |
| 110 Spitbrook Rd. ZK03-2/T43 | URL: http://world.std.com/~mbg/ |
| Nashua, NH 03062 | "pdp-11 programmer - some assembler |
| (603) 884 1055 | required." - mbg |
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
24 Nov
24 Nov
12:09 p.m.
Megan wrote:
I would suggest that the move from boston cannot
expect to have
reduced any ill feeling but increased it...
I can understand that those who live on the east coast may feel
slighted by this, but when you consider that the PURPOSE of the move
was to get the collection into a place where it could actually be
maintained in a reasonable manner, surely you'd have to concede that
to be better than letting it languish (and possibly meet a much more
horrible fate) in Boston.
It will obviously take some time for TCMHC to win the trust of those
who felt betrayed by the actions of TCM. But in all fairness I think
that their intentions are better judged by their recent actions than
those taken by TCM years ago. TCMHC seems genuinely concerned about
preserving the historical record, and educating people about computer
history, rather than simply acting as a thinly veiled outlet for Intel
advertising. This is, for instance, demonstrated by such things as their
IBM 1620 restoration project. There is a lot of interest in restoring
other systems as well, but there aren't enough resources to do multiple
systems at once.
4:26 p.m.
Thanks Eric for your thoughful comments. In particular I appreciate your
willingness to give the History Center a chance. I think this thread has
been fruitful in re-establishing our connections to the collecting
community at large and I have received numerous positive comments from
individuals on the list wishing to get involved in our activities as well.
I am hopeful this can be a fresh start for all of us to bootstrap computer
history even further and share information (and war stories!) about our
fascinating hobby. The Center is placing quite a few of its video archives
on-line as digital media streams in the weeks ahead and I will let the list
know when they become available.
Also, we put out our quarterly on-line newsletter today at:
http://www.computerhistory.org/events/core/1.1/ If anyone on the list
wishes to be added to our regular (low traffic) mailing list, please just
drop me a line.
Thanks again for getting in tuoch!
Dag.
At 02:09 AM 11/25/99 -0000, Eric Smith wrote:
Megan wrote:
--
Dag Spicer
Curator & Manager of Historical Collections
Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
The Computer Museum History Center
Building T12-A
NASA Ames Research Center
Mountain View, CA 94035
Tel: +1 650 604 2578
Fax: +1 650 604 2594
E-m: spicer(a)computerhistory.org
WWW: http://www.computerhistory.org
<spicer(a)computerhistory.org> PGP: 15E31235 (E6ECDF74 349D1667 260759AD
7D04C178)
S/V 516T
Read about The Computer Museum History Center in the
November issue of WIRED magazine! See "The Computer
Hall of Fame - Modern Art." pp. 276 - 299.
I would suggest that the move from boston cannot
expect to have
reduced any ill feeling but increased it...
I can understand that those who live on the east coast may feel
slighted by this, but when you consider that the PURPOSE of the move
was to get the collection into a place where it could actually be
maintained in a reasonable manner, surely you'd have to concede that
to be better than letting it languish (and possibly meet a much more
horrible fate) in Boston.
It will obviously take some time for TCMHC to win the trust of those
who felt betrayed by the actions of TCM. But in all fairness I think
that their intentions are better judged by their recent actions than
those taken by TCM years ago. TCMHC seems genuinely concerned about
preserving the historical record, and educating people about computer
history, rather than simply acting as a thinly veiled outlet for Intel
advertising. This is, for instance, demonstrated by such things as their
IBM 1620 restoration project. There is a lot of interest in restoring
other systems as well, but there aren't enough resources to do multiple
systems at once.
6:05 p.m.
I can understand that those who live on the east coast
may feel
slighted by this, but when you consider that the PURPOSE of the move
was to get the collection into a place where it could actually be
maintained in a reasonable manner, surely you'd have to concede that
to be better than letting it languish (and possibly meet a much more
horrible fate) in Boston.
Don't get me wrong... I'm not against them and their purpose, but
now that they are on the wron, er, west coast, those of us without
pockets, let alone deep ones, are entirely out of luck. Since the
only times I've even been out to california were when I was on a
business trip where I presented at DECUS, or at an SF convention for
which I saved for a year, I've pretty much given up hope that I will
ever see the real collection, or any part of it, again...
I do want to be involved as much as I can be from here.
But I think we really do need an accounting of what truly happened,
if anything, to the machines which were mentioned in earlier messages.
If nothing else, to absolutely set the record straight and to stop
the various versions of events.
preserving the historical record, and educating people
about computer
history, rather than simply acting as a thinly veiled outlet for Intel
advertising.
I hope so... that was part of the reason I gave up on TCM a few years
ago... it *was* little more than a WinTel advertisement, as if the
computer industry started with PeeCees...
Megan Gentry
Former RT-11 Developer
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
| Megan Gentry, EMT/B, PP-ASEL | Internet (work): gentry!zk3.dec.com |
| Unix Support Engineering Group | (home): mbg!world.std.com |
| Compaq Computer Corporation | addresses need '@' in place of '!' |
| 110 Spitbrook Rd. ZK03-2/T43 | URL: http://world.std.com/~mbg/ |
| Nashua, NH 03062 | "pdp-11 programmer - some assembler |
| (603) 884 1055 | required." - mbg |
--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
9160
days inactive
9161
days old
3 comments
3 participants
participants (3)
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eric＠brouhaha.com -
mbg＠world.std.com -
spicer＠computerhistory.org