Vulcan Is Closing 'The Living Computers: Museum + Labs' In Seattle (seattletimes.com) 23
Flexagon writes: Buried in the news of several closures by Vulcan, a venture by the late Paul Allen, is that Seattle's Living Computers museum is among the closures, along with Seattle's Cinerama movie theater.
"Two museums under the Vulcan wing, closed because of the pandemic, will also remain shuttered: the Living Computers: Museum + Labs and the Flying Heritage & Combat Armor Museum," reports The Seattle Times. "For both, the Vulcan statement said, the coming months will be a time to evaluate 'if, how and when to reopen.' The Living Computers: Museum + Labs, described on Vulcan's website as 'the world's largest collection of fully restored supercomputers, mainframes, minicomputers and more,' opened in Sodo in 2012 and was expanded in 2016. Its offerings included not only selections from Allen's vast personal collection, but hands-on exhibits on virtual reality, self-driving cars, robotics, and computer-generated art and music."
"Two museums under the Vulcan wing, closed because of the pandemic, will also remain shuttered: the Living Computers: Museum + Labs and the Flying Heritage & Combat Armor Museum," reports The Seattle Times. "For both, the Vulcan statement said, the coming months will be a time to evaluate 'if, how and when to reopen.' The Living Computers: Museum + Labs, described on Vulcan's website as 'the world's largest collection of fully restored supercomputers, mainframes, minicomputers and more,' opened in Sodo in 2012 and was expanded in 2016. Its offerings included not only selections from Allen's vast personal collection, but hands-on exhibits on virtual reality, self-driving cars, robotics, and computer-generated art and music."
Re: (Score:2)
coming from thai ip.
sure. eats and drinks in seattle newsletter. sure. sign me up. also isn't the fucking restaurants closed anyways?
also, look, is it just the foundation or whatever it is looking for an excuse to close and keep the money in the foundation?
his sister is destroying his legacy (Score:5)
She needs walkin'-around money (Score:2)
She and Mackenzie have a big Girls' Night Out planned as soon as Governor Inslee lifts the lockdown!
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Money is wasted on the dead. It's her money now, she gets to decide what to do with it and she doesn't have to keep pouring money into the things that don't interest her.
It's sad, but less sad than dead people continuing to micromanage their fortunes from the grave would be. He could've set up an endowment if he wanted to though.
No, his sister is destroying his gift to us (Score:2)
Money is wasted on the dead.
No, the money was not spent on the dead. The dead (Paul) tried to preserve things he thought we shouldn't lose (rock and roll, science fiction and computer history among them) and share them with everyone.
A more realstic take is that the greedy sibling of someone who did things doesn't want any of his wealth shared with the rest of us. Money shouldn't be wasted on the masses?
Re: his sister is destroying his legacy (Score:2)
I had no idea this museum existed and now I am wondering if it would be worth a trip to Seattle to see it if it reopens. Heaven knows Seattle is not my kind of town.
Inevitable I think (Score:3)
Not Living Computers (Score:5, Interesting)
And here I was thinking they had a room full of people who did calculations with pen and paper, from the day before automated calculating devices were used.
In the beginning, the top floor of a factory was often the drawing room or the calculation room. If there was a need to do matrix calculus, they would pass each term to two people (to check the results) in a classroom-like setting.
When I see the term "living computer", I think of these calculation rooms, not of the machines that came afterwards.
Also, not everything had to be done with calculus. For a two-dimensional stress calculation in a lattice construction, you would draw a Cremona diagram [wikipedia.org], and do the calculation graphically. One aeronautical student showed that the graphical results done on a pre-WW-II aircraft done with Cremona diagrams were about as accurate as the same calculations done with Finite Elements in the days of computers.
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The living computer museum was to contrast from all the museums that have computers powered off and maybe not even in working order. Computers DO things and not seeing what they do defeats a large part of the point.
I've only been once, but I hope someone steps up and volunteers funding to prevent this.
Your idea is awesome too. I would love to see a museum with a working difference engine, and all the other things we've designed to help us compute things. The analog firing systems from WWII for example.
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Paul Allen (Score:1)
I killed Paul Allen with an axe! In the face! His body is dissolving in a bathtub in Hell's Kitchen!
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to return some videotapes.
It's a problem (Score:2)
They have some incredibly rare operational systems out there. The problem is these systems were donated to the LCM because the LCM would not take anything on loan. So people donated the last known working example of something thinking it would be safe in a museum. Now the museum is refunding pledge and membership money. The fate of this rare hardware is up in the air now.
Re: (Score:2)
They have some incredibly rare operational systems out there. The problem is these systems were donated to the LCM because the LCM would not take anything on loan. So people donated the last known working example of something thinking it would be safe in a museum. Now the museum is refunding pledge and membership money. The fate of this rare hardware is up in the air now.
The other museum mentioned, the Flying Heritage & Combat Armor Museum, looks like it has some nice pieces as well. My wife would have been bored out of her mind, but definitely a museum I would have wanted to go to if I was out in Seattle and knew it existed.
Functioning computer museum (Score:2)
There is a functioning computer museum near Pittsburgh - New Kensington, where a very mad bunch of people have a collection of working mainframes and PCs of various vintages, from an early PDP8 onwards. Its called the Large Scale System Museum, and its only open by appointment but, wow, the stuff they have AND IT WORKS !