Problems we face as collectors/curators: The last lesson of Bob Pease
Yes, this post is too long. Read it when you have time, if you have interest in analog electronics. Or, if you think about problems in collecting vintage technology from others' "archives" (spelled "hoardings"). https://www.electronicdesign.com/analog/what-s-all-pease-prototype-stuff-any... (link to previous article below) https://www.electronicdesign.com/analog/what-s-all-stuff-stuff-anyhow One of the electronic trade-magazines (papery bloggy things in postal mail to oldies) occasionally sends me email-links to articles on their Web sites. This article caught my attention, as it represents the problems we have today as collectors of vintage computing (or electronic, or semiconductor) items. It's the perception that this stuff is junk and has no value except as curiosities accumulated by "hoarders". But I'll explain why this stuff has value. If you read the article, it's about a collection of accumulated artifacts of work done by Bob Pease, an analog design engineer at Philbrick National Semiconductor in the 1960's and decades following. Since he worked before digital simulation - and because simulation isn't good enough - he accumulated many prototype circuits for things he designed. a reminder: prototypes prove the result. So they were necessary at design-verification time, and later to deal with problems in production. He also found them useful to demonstrate to others, and to show when National was exhibiting. Bob's contributions were not only in design and development, but in education and in publication. His columns (and books from them) on analog design were amusing, informative and are read to this day. He personally mentored a generation of analog electronic designers. Bob Pease died several years ago. However: the article is informative about attitudes about previous design and prototype practices; or simply about the technical past. The article essentially suggests: "This stuff is a mess of junk. We don't do things this way now, we know better now. There's no value to this stuff, because we don't know how to make sense of it. Since some parts are before production, they can't be of any interest to anyone except as scrap. A few things, remind some of us about the-old-days. But this guy was a hoarder." There's a link to a previous article of a few months prior (link above). The "Pease collection" was obtained from Pease's estate, I think in 2017. The task of organizing it was "resigned" to a "media relations manager" - very likely a person who was unfamiliar with its technical content. As with the current article, other engineer's comments and photos give some meaning to the items photographed. Nobody seems to know exactly what to do with this stuff, other than to give it away to their older buddies at social events. Of course, any collector of vintage semiconductors will wince when reading this article: they love pre-production parts. And many "senior" analog engineers, like the ones quoted in the articles, have some experience with the chips and circuits shown, and the methods Bob used in design and construction. Again: they are still informed by his work and methods. Some number of engineers or collectors, would likely be pleased to have some example from their mentor or simply from the period. I won't give a lecture on "curation", the art of displaying and describing artifacts to glean information and context and to preserve intellectual and/or physical content. That describes a process that has yet to be performed (may never happen) for this rescued but endangered collection. It's already picked over a few times. For those who are simply vintage-computing collectors or users, you'll likely be saddened by association about this article and situation. It could well be a bunch of vintage computers and accessories. Note the author confuses a 5.25-inch floppy drive with "a CD player". If that kind of iconic artifact is unrecognizable in 2019, imagine what will be overlooked going forward. The last lesson of Bob Pease, may well be as suggested in the title of the article: "What is this stuff, anyhow?". What's to be done - if anything - with artifacts of technical work and products? Do they have value? What do they mean? Can they inform us, or simply amuse us, or do they just get in the way? Regards, Herb Johnson -- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net preserve, recover, restore 1970's computing email: hjohnson AT retrotechnology DOT com or try later herbjohnson AT retrotechnology DOT info
The last lesson of Bob Pease, may well be as suggested in the title of the article: "What is this stuff, anyhow?". What's to be done - if anything - with artifacts of technical work and products? Do they have value? What do they mean? Can they inform us, or simply amuse us, or do they just get in the way?
This is why, when giving museum tours, I focus hard on explaining the "so what" instead of technical specifications. Other than storage (how many of these doodads are needed to make one modern memory cards), most of our visitors couldn't care less about speed, memory, or whatever else. They want to know what is this thing and why should I care. If you don't make that point early, then you lose them.
Indeed. I made several of these points in my 2018 VCF class on collecting, particularly around the ultimate disposition of a collection. Provenance and purpose came up as very important topic around the ideas of documenting and preservation, but they also have an impact on how they will be treated once the collector is gone. All things to consider. On Mon, Aug 26, 2019 at 4:02 PM Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
The last lesson of Bob Pease, may well be as suggested in the title of the article: "What is this stuff, anyhow?". What's to be done - if anything - with artifacts of technical work and products? Do they have value? What do they mean? Can they inform us, or simply amuse us, or do they just get in the way?
This is why, when giving museum tours, I focus hard on explaining the "so what" instead of technical specifications. Other than storage (how many of these doodads are needed to make one modern memory cards), most of our visitors couldn't care less about speed, memory, or whatever else. They want to know what is this thing and why should I care. If you don't make that point early, then you lose them.
Herb wrote:
The last lesson of Bob Pease, may well be as suggested in the title of the article: "What is this stuff, anyhow?". What's to be done - if anything - with artifacts of technical work and products? Do they have value? What do they mean? Can they inform us, or simply amuse us, or do they just get in the way?
On 8/26/2019 4:01 PM, Evan Koblentz wrote:
This is why, when giving museum tours, I focus hard on explaining the "so what" instead of technical specifications. Other than storage (how many of these doodads are needed to make one modern memory cards), most of our visitors couldn't care less about speed, memory, or whatever else. They want to know what is this thing and why should I care. If you don't make that point early, then you lose them.
So Evan, what works for the visitors you describe? Do they need an explanation of "floppy disks" or "where's the mouse?". What do they end up caring about, from what they see, about a world before their time or outside some technical interest? The Pease circuits are a harder "sell" because they lack reference to anything at all, if one doesn't know a wire or an IC or a circuit. But I'd not sell them - exhibit or curate them - to anyone BUT circuit designers and period-engineers. And that's fine, just another specialized collection. Any providence or function - as Dean suggests is useful - won't work for anyone beyond those knowledgeable in the craft of design. But - most of them will see "obsolete" and lose interest. "Catching" them is like Evan's problem in catching modern interest in old computers - when both "old" and "computers" are out of vogue today. Regards, Herb -- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net preserve, recover, restore 1970's computing email: hjohnson AT retrotechnology DOT com or try later herbjohnson AT retrotechnology DOT info
Herb wrote:
The last lesson of Bob Pease, may well be as suggested in the title of the article: "What is this stuff, anyhow?". What's to be done - if anything - with artifacts of technical work and products? Do they have value? What do they mean? Can they inform us, or simply amuse us, or do they just get in the way?
On 8/26/2019 4:01 PM, Evan Koblentz wrote:
This is why, when giving museum tours, I focus hard on explaining the "so what" instead of technical specifications. Other than storage (how many of these doodads are needed to make one modern memory cards), most of our visitors couldn't care less about speed, memory, or whatever else. They want to know what is this thing and why should I care. If you don't make that point early, then you lose them.
So Evan, what works for the visitors you describe?
It depends. I welcome them, ask if they've been here before, find out if they're techies or normal people :), and size up the situation from there. Sometimes I ask if they want a tour or if they just want to look around. Other times I push into one choice or the other. Basically I try to get a sense of who they are and what's the best way to entertain+inform them. The hardest situation is when a group has one engineer, one non-techie with mild interest, one teenage kid, and one toddler ... how do you pick the best thing for all four of them? That type of thing happens a lot. One thing I * always * do is pick the youngest child or the uninterested spouse and tell them their job is to make sure everyone else in their party doesn't touch anything! It works great. I could go into a lot more detail/examples, but it would be threadjacking.
participants (3)
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Dean Notarnicola -
Evan Koblentz -
Herb Johnson