Recently the Christie’s auction house released the list of items that would be going up for sale as part of the first lot of Living Computer Museum items, under the banner “Gen One: Innovations from the Paul G. Allen Collection”. One auction covers many ‘firsts’ in the history of computing, including a range of computers like an Apple 1, and a PDP-10, as well as early Microsoft memos and code printouts. The other auctions include such items like a Gemini Spacesuit as worn by [Ed White] and a signed 1939 letter from [Albert Einstein] to [US President Roosevelt] on the discovery by the Germans of a fissionable form of uranium from which a nuclear weapon could be constructed.
We previously reported on this auction when it was first announced in June of this year. At the time many were saddened at seeing the only computer history and its related educational facilities vanish, and there were worries among those who had donated items to the museum what would happen to these now that the museum’s inventory was being put up for sale. As these donations tend to be unconditional, the museum is free to do with the item as they see fit, but ‘being sold at auction’ to probably a private collector was likely not on their mind when filling in the donation form.
As the first auctions kick off in a few days we will just have to wait and see where the museum’s inventory ends up at, but it seems likely that many of these items which were publicly viewable will now be scattered across the globe in private collections.
Top image: A roughly 180° panorama of the “conditioned” room of the Living Computer Museum, Seattle, Washington, USA. Taken in 2014. (Credit: Joe Mabel)
The most depressing part is, that the proceeds will disappear in a “charity” (aka slush fund) of billionaire heirs. They probably don’t even pay taxes on it like us lowly Ebayers have to these days.
Money laundering at its finest
Wow. That is just all around sad. I feel bad for the donors. I would hope they have no attachment to the items, but if that were the case they would have ended up in a County Seat Historical Center in a building next to a never restored grist mill that would have been destroyed by a fire a mysterious 3 years after opening and the new Historic Center is a single wide trailer with a bunch of dollar tree framed pictures of the inside of the old Historic Center lol *sorry, had to I saw 4 last year with that story. I would hope someone is taking a look at the financials of the institution and how it got to this point.
I haven’t seen it on the auction lot list, but one of the LCM’s ‘scouts’ came here to Australia and acquired a complete IBM System/360 Model 40 and another older mainframe (709?).
My dad was a hardware specialist on /40 and very likely serviced that machine. I had plans to visit the museum where it was (on the other side of the country from me) sometime to see it but now it’s gone to a country I am not likely to visit anytime soon. And as far as I have been told, they damaged it in transit and misplaced some parts. Yes, even billionaires can’t get things treated with care it seems. To say I am furious that these events happened would be putting it very mildly.
“As these donations tend to be unconditional”
Note to donors: stipulate that items donated to a museum cannot be sold until they are rejected as DONATIONS offered to all other museums, their availability announced in a widely published public notice and via specific communications with other subject-relevant museums.
Another option is to make them a “permanent loan”. In which case should the museum cease to exist they would be returned to their loaners or their heirs.
I’m still a bit confused on this one. Generally a museum won’t suddenly flip from functional to unviable in any form. Selling off some exhibits and right-sizing I can understand.
Everyone throwing in the towel and selling off the inventory just sounds like the board’s funding their other non-profits… it sounds poorly governed.
Perhaps nobody under 65 visits and the age gets older every year. I can recall when ‘antique electronics and computers” became Commodore 64 and Gameboys. Classic cars became Toyota Celicas, etc. The museum items are now just too old and removed from the experience of younger people and not old enough to be ancient.
My mind goes on flights of fancy at sight of any Buzz Aldin memorabilia. Younger people not so much. This stuff will go to other collections public and private. The Einstein letter is incredible. OTOH I was bored by more than one PDP-10 and all the IBM iron. I live within 35 minutes from the museum and have never been.
It turned out to not be a museum as an independent institution, but temporary public access to someone’s private collection.
Jason Scott has a good description of the situation, comparing it to Jay Leno’s garage
https://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5672