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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

#111

Post by walterbell »

rvba wrote: post #110
walterbell wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

250,000 students a year benefit from Ontario Science Center, the best of whom go onto the engineering and computer science programs of Canadian universities like U of Waterloo and U of Toronto, from where they are recruited by North American tech companies. > zero return on investment Any junior i-banker can produce a spreadsheet showing the lifetime labor value of high-quality technical talent educated at Canadian u…

Any junior banker can produce a spreadsheet for you that will claim anything you want - it is called Management Consulting. Anyway, since you know better how those big companies can invest, you can use your own money to reap the benefits. Money is literally lying on the street for you.

There is a difference between investment banking and management consulting.

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

#112

Post by vanchor3 »

buildbot wrote: post #4

It’s so incredibly stupid to sell off each piece of the museum - 50K for a DEC-10? Does the Allen estate really need the cash? Jody Allen is simply bent on destroying her brother’s legacy. It was extremely cool and educational to visit the museum as an EE undergraduate, to visually see and use parts of the history of computing. It’s a massive loss to loose this collection. Some of the items we will never get back or…

> It’s so incredibly stupid to sell off each piece of the museum - 50K for a DEC-10? Does the Allen estate really need the cash?

Supposedly the proceeds are going to "charitable causes", though the article doesn't go into any more detail.

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

#113

Post by ghaff »

singleshot_ wrote: post #24
taw28 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In short, because it was donated and not loaned. Once it leaves your hands, the museum can do as it wishes (within the restrictions of its bylaws).

“Philanthropic trust” is probably the concept you missed here. Don’t worry, it looks like Allen missed it too.

And with fairly unusual exceptions, museums don't tend to like a lot of restrictions on what they can do with donations.

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

#114

Post by dbish »

BobAliceInATree wrote: post #86

The sad reality is that you can spend a lifetime collecting something, the but likelihood that any of your potential heirs is also interested in it, is pretty close to zero. That's true of multi-million dollar vintage computers, or your childhood stamp collection that's mostly worthless. Paul's mistake was not properly establishing a foundation & endowment to maintain this musuem, which almost certainly leaks lots of…

In this case he didn’t have heirs and seems to have asked in his will to auction it off instead of endowing it.

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

#116

Post by dbish »

spaceguillotine wrote: post #43

Paul Allen sure didn't have great foresight for post death. First Cinerama and now the computer museum. The current sentiment with seattle lifers is that he used Seattle as a playground and didn't actually care about the longevity. EMP now MoPop just keeps hanging on by a thread as well and has gone through lots of turmoil.

Sounds like he was onboard with shutting things down. It wasn’t a foresight thing, more that he wasn’t interested in it going on

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

#117

Post by ghaff »

dsand wrote: post #71
KerrAvon wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely too late for LCM -- the heirs don't care about the societal value and are parting it out. It's gone. It'd be super cool if CHM added a living computers wing. They've done a few nice restorations of some large machines, but it's not really the same as something like making a few terminals connected to a PDP-10 directly available to the public. Or some of the early, weird PCs, Unix boxes, Lisp machines.

There are no heirs for LCM. Allen's will specified what do to in particular with a few of his many assets. But for all the rest, he wrote to sell it all, and donate the raised money to charities. So the will's executor (his sister) does not have the latitude to divert some assets to other outcomes. LCM was never self-sustaining via tickets. It always needed yearly infusions of cash from Allen. Re-opening it as it was…

The people railing here are ignoring the fact that for whatever reason (he didn't actually care that much, he was sick and didn't have the time) didn't explicitly provide for this museum to be maintained into the foreseeable future. That may or may not be a bad outcome but it's what happens when someone passes and they haven't made an explicit provision with funding for something they owned.

By and large, museums need to cover their operating costs and apparently this one didn't.

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

#118

Post by endgame »

sva_ wrote: post #51
craniumslows wrote: post #49

If you liked the Living Computer Museum then you may be interested in the https://icm.museum/ Interim Computer Museum.

If you're ever close to Bonn, Germany, check Out the Artihmeum[0]. It starts at the top floor with the oldest "computers" and gets more modern as you walk down. They even have an original Enigma encryption machine. You can interact with some of them, but not all. 0. https://www.arithmeum.uni-bonn.de/

You're underselling it. The bottom floor has vintage hand-cranked calculators that you're allowed to compute with!

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

#119

Post by BobAliceInATree »

bombcar wrote: post #104
BobAliceInATree wrote: post #86

The sad reality is that you can spend a lifetime collecting something, the but likelihood that any of your potential heirs is also interested in it, is pretty close to zero. That's true of multi-million dollar vintage computers, or your childhood stamp collection that's mostly worthless. Paul's mistake was not properly establishing a foundation & endowment to maintain this musuem, which almost certainly leaks lots of…

You're not going to get 50 cents if I know anything about it. Maybe if you started selling today you could get that, an estate auction will get a few pennies.

A few of my pieces are quite desirable and valuable, most of them not. I looked at the numbers, and all together 40-50% of what I paid is the ballpark of today's value, not including any consignment fees.

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

#120

Post by ikiris »

bombcar wrote: post #104
BobAliceInATree wrote: post #86

The sad reality is that you can spend a lifetime collecting something, the but likelihood that any of your potential heirs is also interested in it, is pretty close to zero. That's true of multi-million dollar vintage computers, or your childhood stamp collection that's mostly worthless. Paul's mistake was not properly establishing a foundation & endowment to maintain this musuem, which almost certainly leaks lots of…

You're not going to get 50 cents if I know anything about it. Maybe if you started selling today you could get that, an estate auction will get a few pennies.

Few is if they're lucky. More like 1.
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