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Living Computers Museum to permanently close, auction vintage items

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Re: Living Computers Museum to permanently close, auction vintage items

#31

Post by magnawave »

sterlind wrote: post #14
armadsen wrote: post #6

I adored the Living Computers Museum. Being able to just sit down and use an Apple 1, Xerox Alto, Altair 8800, and so many more in the same place was incredible. And then, a friendly museum employee being there to show you how to use it, tell you about what made it unique, etc. was even better. It was so much better than most look-but-don’t-touch museums. It’s really a travesty that Paul Allen’s sister seems bent on…

why is she doing this? for the money, or out of some form of spite?

The best I can tell from talking with insiders at a couple of his properties, is that he did a beyond bad job at “succession planning”. The light exception being MoPOP of course but that’s a different beast. So without setting up foundations/entities to fund/run your projects and getting people aligned before you pass, odds are your estate won’t.

So want to blame the family. But really Paul Allen’s fault here.

It’s a shame, was such a great museum.

Re: Living Computers Museum to permanently close, auction vintage items

#32

Post by zimm »

longdustytrail wrote: post #22
sterlind wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why is she doing this? for the money, or out of some form of spite?

The same thing happened to another one of Paul’s wacky passion projects, the Cinerama theater. That ended up being taken over by the Seattle Film Festival after being shut down for a few years. My impression is that Paul died somewhat suddenly and simply didn’t make arrangements to keep these things going. His sister is not interested in them so she’s winding them down. It’s too bad he didn’t set up some kind of endo…

https://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Bodyguards-Vulcan-CE...

It doesn't seem like she was the nicest person.

Re: Living Computers Museum to permanently close, auction vintage items

#33

Post by zimm »

mostlysimilar wrote: post #21
tivert wrote: post #7

Some embarrassingly rich person needs to give the Computer History Museum enough money to buy all of it. It's puzzling why all his stuff was organized in such a way that it could get wound down like this. Seems like it would have been way better to create a nonprofit then endow it with enough money to keep operating independently.

Bill Gates seems like a prime option.

info@gatesfoundation.org

Email and ask

Re: Living Computers Museum to permanently close, auction vintage items

#34

Post by da-bacon »

There was a world before the dot com explosion when tinkering with computers was odd, a passion that gripped few, and was looked upon as extremely odd by most. This museum was the closest thing to being able to travel back to that era. You could plop yourself down at a Xerox Alto and hack away to your heart's content. Being able to share this experience with my son is something I will always remember about this museum.

A sad day for computing, and a sad day for Seattle.

Re: Living Computers Museum to permanently close, auction vintage items

#36

Post by dboreham »

13of40 wrote: post #3

> A highlight of the sale is a computer which Allen helped restore and on which he worked, a DEC PDP-10: KI-10. Built in 1971, it’s the first computer that both Allen and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates ever used prior to founding Microsoft. It’s estimated to fetch $30,000 to $50,000. What? I know lots of people who would save them the trouble and buy it now for $50K. How bad of an investment could that be? Edit: I'm…

A dec-10 is pretty big (at the LCM it is in a room that's something like 40' by 20'), needs air conditioning, and needs a beefy electrical supply.

Nobody really knows the market price for such a thing because very few are left in running order and there are very few people with the resources to provide it with water and hay.

Re: Living Computers Museum to permanently close, auction vintage items

#37

Post by eschaton »

rbanffy wrote: post #19
eschaton wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money and an absolute disinterest in anything Paul cared about.

This is not just disinterest. It feels like active contempt.

I think she doesn’t care about it enough to hold it in contempt except insofar as it represents an asset of Paul’s that hasn’t been converted into money.

Re: Living Computers Museum to permanently close, auction vintage items

#38

Post by tivert »

dboreham wrote: post #35
zimm wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

info@gatesfoundation.org Email and ask

Presumably billg is reading this thread already.

> Presumably billg is reading this thread already.

I would assume he's not wasting his time with HN. He's rich enough and well-known enough that I'd think he'd be able to get superior versions of everything HN can provide.

Re: Living Computers Museum to permanently close, auction vintage items

#39

Post by ghaff »

smsm42 wrote: post #29
ChrisArchitect wrote: post #23

Deleted all the social accounts and website offline too? Harsh :-(

We still don't have proper digital preservation mechanisms. If you are an executor of an estate, and you have a website and a twitter account, what you do with them? You are surely not interested in running them by yourself. You can't just leave them alone - website support costs money, and also if left alone, it will inevitably be broken into and cause all kinds of trouble. You can't just sell it to somebody (at lea…

Exactly. Unless you've setup a sufficient endowment and a legal entity of some sort, it's not reasonable to expect a relative to keep your passion project going. And even if they do for sentimental reasons for a while, that's just kicking the can a bit down the road.

Re: Living Computers Museum to permanently close, auction vintage items

#40

Post by ghaff »

13of40 wrote: post #3

> A highlight of the sale is a computer which Allen helped restore and on which he worked, a DEC PDP-10: KI-10. Built in 1971, it’s the first computer that both Allen and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates ever used prior to founding Microsoft. It’s estimated to fetch $30,000 to $50,000. What? I know lots of people who would save them the trouble and buy it now for $50K. How bad of an investment could that be? Edit: I'm…

> How bad of an investment could that be?

Probably pretty bad.

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