Washington D.C. Trip

From: John Lewczyk <jlewczyk_at_speakeasy.net>
Date: Wed May 30 23:48:21 2001

Jason,

I agree that those museums are a MUST SEE for any vintage computer
enthusiast!

You forgot to mention (did you miss it?) that they have the origional
"Mark-8 Microcomputer" that Jon Titus built as found on the cover of Radio
Electronics in 1974! It was right next to the micros and micro magazines
exhibit. Jon was a guest at VCF in 1999.

I reckon that the burn-in on the Xerox Alto was an early "desktop theme" or
"screen saver" (did the Alto have that feature?). If I recall correctly it
reminded me of cartoon-like butterflies, flowers, or a bee or something like
that. There were a number of Altos placed into service at the White House
for use by secretaries there, and perhaps one of those is what ended up at
the nearby Smithsonian. I understand that the secretaries that got to use
them, loved 'em.

Its a pity that none of the computers on display at the the museum actually
are working. I think that is a major flaw in their presentation.

I found the videos running as part of the Enigma exhibit and the Eniac
exhibits to be particularly interesting.

John Lewczyk

jlewczyk_at_speakeasy.net
classiccmp digest subscriber

> Date: Wed, 30 May 2001 13:57:30 -0400
> From: "Jason McBrien" <jbmcb_at_hotmail.com>
> Subject: Washington D.C. Trip
>
> Didn't get anything from anywhere on my extended Memorial Day vacation to
> Washington D.C. (Mostly running through museums) But I highly reccomend it
> to anyone interested in historical computing devices. The main Smithsonian
> museums I went to were the American History Museum and the Air and Space
> museum. Both had special exhibits on information processing, and among the
> highlights are:
> *snip*
Received on Wed May 30 2001 - 23:48:21 BST