[vcf-midatlantic] Museum report

[Adam Michlin]

On 12/29/2015 10:16 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
>    We cannot keep the hardware functioning for 10000 years, or even 100
> years.  There are rubber and plastic components in a lot of this stuff,
> and they are slowly deteriorating, depolymerizing, and falling to bits.
>
>    Our only hope in that are is that accessible, inexpensive, low-volume
> manufacturing techniques, such as 3D printing, mature quickly enough for
> us to be able to replace those components.

Ugh. I haven't bottom posted since my FidoNet days.. feels.. wrong.

Anyway, there are some wonderful analogies in the music world. My family 
had a wonderful Steinway B piano from the 1930s and I was absolutely 
convinced we would keep it in the family for another 100 years until my 
repairman explained that pianos just don't last that long. The famous 
example is Beethoven's piano, from the early 1800s, which is kept 
loosely strung and thus cannot be played at all. To do otherwise would 
risk severe, if not permanent, damage to the piano since the frames are 
under such a massive amount of tension. I've also seen 300 year old 
violins completely reconstructed to be essentially brand new. Violins 
worth $300,000 and more. At the same time, there is a set of Stradivari 
instruments at the Met Museum worth literally millions of dollars under 
glass.

It is only a matter of time until we will have to decide whether 
computer museums are for using vintage computers or looking at vintage 
computers. My take is to have one of each under glass for viewing and, 
by whatever means necessary, make the other ones work.. a living museum, 
if you will. I seem to recall the Computer Museum in Mountain View is 
heading in this direction with several items under museum glass. Too 
much so, if you ask me, but they get extra points for having a working 
PDP running Spacewar.

I don't see people making modern replicas of floppy disk drives 
(economies of scale barely support the SD card etc. solutions), but I 
didn't like floppy drives when they were cutting edge technology, 
either. So we might be looking at the very real possibility that we can 
show computers exactly as they looked, but can't use them exactly as 
they were used, much like Beethoven's piano.

And I say this as someone who takes much joy out of showing every one of 
his high school students what it sounds and looks like to boot 8bit 
machines with floppy disks.

Best wishes,

             -Adam

---
Adam Michlin
Computer Science Teacher
Pope John XXIII Regional High School
Sparta, NJ
Administrator: https://www.facebook.com/groups/cptrsci/