Reviewing a trove of old computers in Germany
Article excerpt
On July 26, 2006, The Computer History Museum curator Dag Spicer received an unexpected email from Dortmund, Germany. It described what appeared to be a lost trove of rare computers abandoned in a warehouse in the town of Castrop-Rauxel. The Museum’s collections committee agreed that a visit was necessary to see exactly what was there […]
On July 26, 2006, The Computer History Museum curator Dag Spicer received an unexpected email from Dortmund, Germany. It described what appeared to be a lost trove of rare computers abandoned in a warehouse in the town of Castrop-Rauxel.
The Museum’s collections committee agreed that a visit was necessary to see exactly what was there and if any of it might be worth adding to the Museum’s permanent collection. After resolving logistical hurdles, fellow CHM curator Alex Bochannek and I flew to Germany. What we found was astonishing.
Inside a three-story warehouse the size of a jet airplane hangar, we encountered hundreds of historical computing artifacts. Spanning from the 1930s punched card era to obscure Cold War-era Eastern Bloc systems to more modern German and European computing systems, the warehouse was a treasure trove, a real-world timeline of computing history.
See the article here and the video below: