Paul Allen’s Living Computers Museum And Labs To Be Auctioned
Paul Allen’s Living Computers Museum And Labs To Be Auctioned
After the Living Computers museum in Seattle closed like so many museums and businesses in 2020 with the pandemic, there were many who feared that it might not open again. Four years later this fea…
Let's see Paul Allen's computers
Why can't mega billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates or some other one help finance this project? It's nothing but peanuts for them.
There are so many things like this. Billionaires (or even multimillionaires) could create an endowment to fund operations for museums like this until the end of time. It was already running on a smaller budget, perhaps $1M or so per year. Even a $20M endowment would probably be enough to sustain it forever. With $30M they could probably afford to expand it a bit. One wonders why Allen didn't set up a trust to do exactly that while he was alive.
I visited the LCM multiple times, and was amazed at how everything was working and interactive. I think it would have been a natural evolution to split the space for early video game consoles as well, perhaps up through the PS1. That might have brought in more (and younger) visitors.
They don't care about us peasants.
I see a lot of articles talking about the white elephants that might be lost from public view, which is probably the biggest tragedy, using their KI-10 as an example.
The one I'm most worried about from that collection is that they have the last known operational CDC6000 series machine (Theirs is a slightly smaller CDC6500, the flagship CDC6600 is the machine that made Seymour Cray famous, it fucked so hard it was 3x as fast as the previous title holder when came out in 1964 and was still the fastest machine in the world until 1969... when it was replaced by the derived, upgraded CDC7600 from 1969-1975).
It's a 12,000lb, 80" tall, 165" on a side monster that draws 30kW (at 208V/400Hz), I haven't heard a plan for it, and there are very, very few possible long-term-secure homes for such a thing.
I guess it's just not in the current auction so it isn't drawing as much attention yet?
Aw, I'm gunna miss this place. Glad I got to see it before it closed.
Well that's a damn shame. I'm glad to hear there's living exhibits elsewhere too now, though.
Let's see Paul Allen's card