They belong in a museum!

September 5, 2024 2:15 PM

Firsts: The History of Computing from the Paul G. Allen Collection. Items are currently being auctioned at Christie's. In addition: Pushing Boundaries: Ingenuity from the Paul G. Allen Collection and Over the Horizon: Art of the Future from the Paul G. Allen Collection
posted by gwint (21 comments total)

I'd take the 1975-91 Byte magazine collection, and the IMSAI, otherwise this stuff is pretty tossable IMO
posted by torokunai at 2:26 PM on September 5 [1 favorite]

There’s a lot of hyperbole in auction listings but it’s hard to argue with calling this “probably the most influential letter written in the twentieth century”.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 2:37 PM on September 5 [13 favorites]

Misread the post at first glance and thought this was about a G. G. Allen collection, which would also be called Pushing Boundaries, presumably.
posted by Pickman's Next Top Model at 2:37 PM on September 5 [3 favorites]

otherwise this stuff is pretty tossable IMO

That take is a little spicy for my taste but it’s worth noting that Firsts is an online-only sale and they’ve saved the best stuff (an Enigma, an Apple I, a Cray Supercomputer) for the live auction, Pushing Boundaries.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 2:44 PM on September 5 [2 favorites]

I really wonder why anyone, even a hardware collector geek, would spend $200K on a "vintage" Cray-2 or some of the other of these crazy priced items. But, then again, people bought NFTs so clearly what do I know?
posted by Dean358 at 2:45 PM on September 5 [1 favorite]

Is this them selling off the contents of the Living Computer Museum?

Cause that's a bummer.
posted by keep_evolving at 2:48 PM on September 5 [3 favorites]

This along with the general unwinding of Paul Allen's Seattle-area pet projects has been an ongoing shock. There's been a lot of local rumor & gossip (often fixating on the possibility of a woman who Just Didn't Care About Tech enough, in the form of his sister Jody Allen as estate executor), but the way it shook out as I understood it was that his final directives were pretty clear about liquidating all of the social/charitable Vulkan endeavors & donating the results to charities. MOPoP (formerly EMP Museum) survived because it split off pre-mortem, & Cinerama managed to get bought by the Seattle International Film Festival with the help of some matching grants from the city (after years of wrangling). Otherwise this, the Flying Heritage & Combat Armor Museum, all of it evaporated/is evaporating.

As you might imagine Jason Scott has an inside loop, & it turns out the Living Computer Museum *was never a museum*.

This was Paul’s collection of computers, aided by friends and fans. It was always that. The Living Computer Museum, it turns out, cost millions, over ten million a year, to operate as it was set up, and it never came close to making that amount of income from door sales and t-shirts. It never came close to even figuring out how it would.
It’s perhaps not surprising this misunderstanding could happen, and with what felt like all the time in the world, a mere five years and change of being open to the public might have seemed like a mere revving up for the grand plan of what would come next. But nothing came next. It was a collection you could walk through in a really, really nice display case.

So that's why this is up for bid, ultimately. It was a collection that never quite became a museum and now it's time for it to be dispersed again.
posted by CrystalDave at 2:50 PM on September 5 [15 favorites]

Well I have a portable tucked away in the basement, heavier than my sewing machine, about the same size, that I don't want to toss but not sure where to donate if that's even possible. It has two 5in floppy drives!
posted by sammyo at 3:11 PM on September 5

fixating on the possibility of a woman who Just Didn't Care About Tech enough

As someone currently enmeshed in sorting through and disposing of a family member's technology collection for the past year (not Paul Allen-scale, more "house, basement and garage full of things that may once have had value, and maybe some of them still do - good luck!") - there is no such thing as "Caring About [hobby] enough" unless you are the collector. I have undoubtedly recycled, trashed, or donated items that someone, somewhere would love to have. I don't see them lining up to help sort through the squirrel nests, shovelware and garage sale cables to pick out the diamonds in the rough. And I'm at least somewhat interested in this stuff!

I can only imagine being tasked with dissolving someone's pickleball museum or extensive stamp collection, let alone something of this level of visibility. Hell, I might well have a decade of Byte magazine waiting for me in a copy paper box somewhere. I definitely have most of the issues of the TI-99/4A "99'er" and more late-90s Mac magazines than anyone else I know.
posted by 1xdevnet at 3:33 PM on September 5 [5 favorites]

About 6 years ago, when my (very) nerdy nephew was ~11, we went to the Living Computer Museum. He was super excited. He had a question, and we found a docent to ask. The guy answered, made small talk, then said "it's pretty slow, want me to show you around?". Of course we took him up and got an hour long private tour. My nephew was giddy for weeks. When I sent him the recent story about the sell off, he was livid.
posted by Gorgik at 4:01 PM on September 5 [13 favorites]

There is a comment at this link that I want to highlight here -- namely that if Paul Allen had wanted this to continue to operate as a museum, he should have (and could have, very easily) set up an endowment for it, as well as a separate nonprofit administrative structure. He failed to do either of those things.

I find it very telling that the author of that piece says "I wish to take a short moment to not demonize Jody Allen" while also being clearly very angry at Jody Allen and Vulcan (or whatever its now called). He finally apparently realizes they're only selling part of the collection, but not until the very end and he's used a lot of language that will make people upset.

Maybe she's carrying out his wishes. Maybe not. But here's the thing: there is nobody to "blame" for this but Allen himself. If this is what he wanted, she's doing what he wished. If this is not what he wanted, he failed to set up the proper structure to keep it from happening. Either way, the dead guy should take the blame here.

(Also, frankly, a lot of stuff there -- in particular the Einstein letter, but a few other pieces as well -- should be in the Smithsonian, not going up for private sale)
posted by anastasiav at 4:47 PM on September 5 [9 favorites]

Wild how some of these early computers look like first drafts of the microwave oven invention.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 4:57 PM on September 5

I've helped rescue and restore a ton of old hardware and it's super fun, but at the end of the day it's a huge investment of space and energy (literally-- these things are power hungry) to fight a losing battle against entropy. Fundamentally you can emulate any of these machines on a couple of bucks of silicon. I still appreciate the tactility of old hardware, but it's not holy. Probably the only bit of old equipment I have in its more or less original form is a VT102. Everything else I'm happy to carve up for parts. Christies may want nearly a thousand bucks for a nixie-tube calculator, but when I found one in a junk bin it got converted into a clock pretty much instantly.

There's definitely a need for a proper computer museum, but it needs to be planned and built to purpose. Right now here in NYC I can think of at least three companies that have private historical computing collections, but none of them are open to the public.

(BTW, if you find yourself in Short Hills, NJ, the old Bell Labs headquarters there has a little free mini-museum that you can just walk in and check out. It's got things like an unlaunched Telstar and the first transistor ever made. No biggie. Hurry up, though, as they're shutting down that facility in the next couple of years.)

heavier than my sewing machine, about the same size, that I don't want to toss but not sure where to donate if that's even possible. It has two 5in floppy drives!

Compaq or Osborne?
posted by phooky at 4:58 PM on September 5 [4 favorites]

Cinerama managed to get bought by the Seattle International Film Festival

A lot of the art collection up for auction would not be out of place on the hallways in the Cinerama.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 4:59 PM on September 5

There’s a lot of hyperbole in auction listings but it’s hard to argue with calling this “probably the most influential letter written in the twentieth century”.


I was trying to think of a letter about computing that could be called that, and failed (a reflection of my knowledge, I'm aware), and I wondered if it was Einstein's letter to FDR before clicking on the link. That letter is a kind of chilling.
posted by mollweide at 5:32 PM on September 5

This is the fate of almost all cherished, beloved and well-curated collections, isn't it? Life is funny like that. Those Chesley Bonestell paintings from the 50s were *the* authoritative vision of the future in space at the time. He developed his own design language which still speaks persuasively today. If I was a rich son of a bitch, I would certainly bid on this painting, which undoubtedly influenced Kubrick on 2001. And this one I actually had framed and hung in the guys' bathroom at my old business for a while…it encapsulates both the future and the past in a very cool way.
posted by jabah at 5:57 PM on September 5 [2 favorites]

>That letter is a kind of chilling.

and the US STILL futzed around for 3 whole years before getting the bomb project going. Now, there was a lot of basic research required to pin down how to begin to weaponize fission, but still . . . if you'd shown them the film of the Hiroshima bombing in 1939, things would have moved a LOT faster . . . reading that The Bomb could take out an entire port vs. seeing it take out an entire port is two different things (cf. Halifax Explosion, 2kT apparently)

Szilard was right that the bomb would be too big to be carried by an aircraft. The US had to create an aircraft engine that was 2X the weight and near 2X the power of the B-17's engine.
posted by torokunai at 6:33 PM on September 5

I'm glad I got to see the Living Computer Museum while it was still open. I'm sorry I'll never get to go back.

A friend of mine was an archivist there. Laid off without ceremony. I'm pretty mad on her behalf, still.
posted by humbug at 6:44 PM on September 5 [6 favorites]

He could have had Vulcan liquidate its real estate holdings and keep its old Byte magazines instead of the other way around.
posted by away for regrooving at 8:41 PM on September 5 [2 favorites]

I'm slightly surprised that there seem to be no takers for the PDP-8 and PDP-10.

CDC6500 was an early computer for me. I think it's a bit crazy to think anybody would want to buy one. I remember when they tore down the one at University of Illinois CSO. Some people took parts for souvenirs.

I concur that the most interesting thing there is the complete collection of BYTE.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 5:48 AM on September 6 [2 favorites]

I don't remember the Pumas, but they're not my size anyway.
posted by MtDewd at 6:38 AM on September 6