Boston CM (was Re: Computer Museum of America ...

From: Bob Shannon <bshannon_at_tiac.net>
Date: Sat Feb 2 09:37:53 2002

I've been to the Boston Computer Museum many many times
from the late 80's on.

At one point I contacted the Curator to see if the museum would be
interested in displaying some of the restored machines that several
local collectors had at the time.

The very notion of computer restoration struck the Museum as insane, and
they wanted nothing to do with such displays, nor even hosting meetings
of collectors and restoration fans. One person even had a PDP 10, and
really needed some space to set the thing up. I was going to put a MIT
CADR on display, and perhaps my 1968 HP 2114, etc. The Museums response
was that unless we were crossing their palms with money, they wanted
nothing to do with us, it was all about donations.

It was not too long after this that I began to think vintage computer
collecting was some sort of deviant behavior or something, and I became
much less active (despite having a oversized 2 car garage to fill!).

Not until many years later did I learn of the VCF events, and I joined
the list.

During that time, the PDP-10 my friend had was lost to scrappers because
he had no space to store it, and many other cool machines were lost as
well.

There have also been rumors of very nice machines being donated to the
B.C.M only to be locked away, unrestored, and worse, sold off as scrap
to feed the cash hungry so-called museum.

Basically, the B.C.M was a social club for a select crowd, and its
primary function was never to preserve and display computing history.

John Allain wrote:

> Derek Peschel wrote:
> > Several years ago it was very good. Then it slipped.
>
> Bryan Pope
> > I first came to Boston. It was only ..._okay_...
>
> Bob Shannon
> > The Boston computer museum was a total joke.
>
> I went twice, perhaps 1983 and 1985.
> 1985 it was rather good, with real historic interest
> shown, none of the Bozo's playground stuff that
> it apperently moved to in the early 90's.
> 1983/2 was Before it officially opened, where it
> was just Gwen and Gordon Bell's corporate
> sponsored collection in Marlborough. Highly
> recommended, though hard to get to now I'm
> afraid.
> When did you go and what was wrong?
>
> John A.
Received on Sat Feb 02 2002 - 09:37:53 GMT