[HLUG] Vintage PC Gallery opens at The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park

[Meijin]

Hi folks, I thought I'd pass on this news release about the new PC gallery at Bletchley.

It should actually state that it is a working ZX81 on display - I think there is a ZX80 but it's not hands on.

Rob

Anyway...



Vintage PC Gallery opens at The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park

TNMOC gets personal, interactive and fashionably retro

The key personal computers that have led the digital revolution in Britain are on display in a new
interactive gallery at The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC) at Bletchley Park.

The new PC Gallery, officially opened on 7 May 2009, exhibits 50 personal computers (PCs), many of
them on interactive display. They date from the 1960s to the present telling the stories of the
development of hardware and software, and the ongoing miniaturisation from luggables to handhelds.

The earliest model on display, dating from 1965, is a PDP8 from the USA, the first mass-produced
computer. The exhibition then focuses on the heyday of British computing and includes working models
of the BBC B micro, the Dragon 32, the Sinclair ZX80, the Amstrad PC1512. With the rise and rivalry
of the IBM PC and the Apple Macs throughout the 1980s, the story then moves on to operating systems
and software. The 1990s see the rise of the luggable becoming portable and then the handheld.

"The PC Gallery is an excellent demonstration of how The National Museum of Computing can develop
given sufficient funds," explained Kevin Murrell, a director and trustee of TNMOC. "We used to
display some of this equipment in a classroom-type environment and it was one of the most popular
elements of the museum. Now these machines are displayed in an interactive gallery surrounded by
reminders of the world events and social context of their time. It really brings home how far and
how quickly computing has moved on and that we still are in the midst of an astonishing revolution,
the pace of which is almost beyond comprehension.

"We have been keen to celebrate the British contribution to computing. In America, the development
of personal computing is often seen as a battle between IBM and Apple, but in Britain the story was
quite different with many small entrepreneurial companies breaking new ground in the late 1970s and
early 1980s." 

Curating the PC Gallery has taken several years and painstaking research. One of the most difficult
devices to find was a working Sinclair ZX80 in good condition. A device that the Museum is still
searching for is a Sinclair MK14, the first home computing kit that went on sale in 1977 for £40.
TNMOC would like to hear from anyone who can help.

The development of the PC Gallery has been made possible by support in recent months from PGP
Corporation, IBM and Hewlett Packard. Two other major galleries are being planned for later this
year and ideas about a gallery on supercomputing are being formulated.

 

About The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park


The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park, an independent charity, houses the largest
collection of functional historic computers in Europe, including a rebuilt Colossus, the world’s
first electronic programmable computer.

The Museum complements the Bletchley Park Trust’s story of codebreaking up to the Colossus and
allows visitors to follow the development of computing from the ultra-secret pioneering efforts of
the 1940s through the mainframes of the 1960s and 1970s, and the rise of personal computing in the
1980s. New working exhibits are regularly unveiled and the public can already view a rebuilt and
fully operational Colossus, a working ICL 2900, one of the workhorse mainframes computers of the
1980s, and many of the earliest desktops of the 1980s and 1990s.

The Museum is currently open on Thursdays and Saturdays from 1pm, and on bank Holidays in spring and
summer. Groups may visit at other times by arrangement.

For more information, see www.tnmoc.org <http://www.tnmoc.org/>