From Samuel Arbesman here’s a combination visit report, two museums - one of computers and one of play:
From the article, some hardware manufacturer logos:
From the article:
LSSM is a museum of computing history that is entirely volunteer-run and visits are by appointment only, which provides it both an exclusive and deeply enthusiastic feel when visiting it. And I’m pretty sure I first learned about it through a map I found online of places where you can see Cray supercomputers displayed publicly (by the way, for another experience, I highly recommend Marcin Wichary’s thread and photos from his recent visit to the museum as well).
The first floor of the museum is mainframe and large-computer-focused, while the upstairs is full of early personal computers (the latest ones are of the BeBox and NeXT vintage). And I was in heaven. I had a fantastic guide who gave me a tour was excited to show me so many treats, from a personal computer that can play Pac-Man in ASCII to a vector monitor display that also involved—if I remember correctly—information from punch cards.
There was even a computer created by Singer Business Machines, a division of Singer, the company that makes sewing machines. So much history and odd path-dependent contingency is bound up in that little fact!
via Dragonfly Digest