As 2016 began, the staff of the Living Computer Museum knew that big changes were coming. That was par for the course, though. Renovations on historic computers had happened every year. Exhibits came and went. Additional staff came on to manage new projects, but that had occurred before too.
After all, this was a place that had evolved from a small private collection of mainframe technology to a website for users to access the growing collection, to eventually a public display of historic machines. Yet nothing came quite as quickly as the wave of big moments for Living Computers: Museum + Lab that shaped this year.
The most outwardly apparent change has been our name and logo. Much like the tech we display, we’ve tweaked our brand to reflect our expanded purpose. Our scope has changed as we doubled in size and brought in new approaches to learning about computing.
As previously outlined in greater detail here on GeekWire, while keeping the same dedication to reviving vintage machines for use both at the museum and online, we’ve expanded our mission to include education about, and access to, modern technology. Our Education Coordinator Nina Arens recently expressed what she hopes to accomplish with the Labs in our Fall newsletter. It is in this space that we hope to foster transformative experiences with computing, especially in young visitors.
Concurrent with the construction of the new exhibits and labs taking place over most of this year, a number of interesting machines were also added to the display of vintage computers, including an IBM 4341, the CP-V operating system on our Xerox Sigma 9, and a Tennis for Two re-creation. Two achievements by our engineering team that took place in the latter half of 2016 generated international press.
The first was ContrAlto, an emulator for the Xerox Alto by LCM+L Senior Vintage Software Developer Josh Dersch. We restored a second Alto to network and then our engineers built a 3mb Ethernet bridge to link the Alto with PCs using ContrAlto, here at LCM+L and publicly accessible via internet login. LCM+L Founder Paul G. Allen announced the creation of ContrAlto and its release to GitHub on August 2nd.
Allen also was a part of a celebration for the second project breakthrough- the restored Control Data Corporation 6500 supercomputer. Principal Engineer Bruce Sherry and his team of consultants had been making huge strides in the project since they started in late 2013. The machine and many of the peripherals now work and we intend on making it accessible online as well. The addition of machines on display will continue next year with the debut of a working Bendix G-15, a vacuum tube computer from the ‘50s, as well as other machines that remain top secret.
Our presence outside the museum expanded further than ever this year. In addition to previous inclusion in film and television, LCM+L’s artifacts once again traveled to the set of Halt and Catch Fire, and were in the Smithsonian Channel documentary Building Star Trek. Locally, LCM+L staff members were onsite with working historic hardware and software for great Seattle area events like GeekGirlCon, Seattle Retro Gaming Expo, and were part of an Emerald City Comic Con panel on sci-fi and tech. We even stepped into the world of art when we shared our popular IBM System 360 Model 91 console with Pivot Art + Culture for the Imagined Futures exhibit.
There was a sense of excitement brewing for LCM+L staff, members, and friends throughout the year as we were eagerly awaiting the completion of our new exhibits and the opportunity to share them with the public. Meanwhile our collections team continued to gather even more historic hardware, software, and documentation for the engineers to breathe life back into. This year was one to celebrate, perhaps the best in the museum’s still-young existence. Now we look to 2017, because with greater resources and reach, the best is yet to come from Living Computers: Museum + Labs.
