LHM to permanently close and sell DEC-10 at auction

I personally have a decent art collection that I've amassed over the past couple decades. I have a few pieces earmarked in my will to specific friends & family that have really liked certain pieces (they don't know), but the reality is that my estate executor is going to sell the vast majority of it, and at 50¢ on the dollar of what I paid.

It’s really a travesty that Paul Allen’s sister seems bent on dismantling everything he left behind.

The RE-PC vintage computing warehouse nearby also has a small museum with equipment going back to the 60s, you can’t touch anything but other sections of the warehouse have plenty of 90s and 2000s desktops set up that you can play with. It’s a good place to look for ancient cables, obscure controllers (I saw two SideWinders there last time), and older displays, I’m planning to go back to pick up the Apple Studio CRT https://everymac.com/monitors/apple/studio_cinema/specs/appl...

hopefully that machine will find a good home in the auction and not be destroyed in the process

the fact that it's shut down is, as bobaliceinatree said, a terrible indictment of paul allen's estate planning. unless he just didn't care about the people who survived him

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 see again.

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.

This was one of my favorite museums in the world, probably with no analogues.

When I interned in Microsoft in 2014, I got to experience Seattle — and the Living Computer Museum was one of the highlights of that experience.

Simply being able to walk in and close-up something simple (say, Fibonacci sequence) on a typewriter terminal of the PDP-10 — and then see the typewriter type the output back to you on the same piece of paper was absolute magic (and a part of computing I wish we still had).

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

Also, it's "LCM" not "LHM".

(for those familiar with The Netherlands, it's located in Helmond)

These honeyed words ring deeply hypocritical when you consider Christie's sees the collection purely as an asset capable of yielding a significant commission once sold.

The closure came as the estate began to deal with a number of properties that no longer had a billionaire benefactor to help keep the doors open, and in line with what the estate says was Allen’s desire to sell his assets after his passing.

I wonder about this. If someone has made a vast fortune in technology, retired from that field to take up philanthropy, built a museum to share the benefits of their experience and insight with the next generation, it seems rather unlikely to me that their greatest posthumous aspiration is to have it dismantled and dispersed.

I find the auction of assets like fine art (also mentioned in the article) easier to understand as art collections are semi-ephemeral and the trading and circulation of fine art among the wealthy has been going on for many centuries. But it also strikes me that having raised $1.6 billion by selling off the art, the estate is not exactly short of funds to keep the museum functioning.

EMP now MoPop just keeps hanging on by a thread as well and has gone through lots of turmoil.

(via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40802686 but we merged those comments hither)

Anyhow, this guy had two working Altos in his basement in Bothell.

I'm from Europe and I've never been to the States, but I loved the remote access to the Living Computers Museum. I'd often do `ssh menu@tty.livingcomputers.org` to see what was up. I'm glad to see that this will now be `ssh menu@tty.sdf.org`. Will it only be emulators or will there be some real computers?

His wish was that it remain in the UK, and he really, really wanted it to stay as a collection. But it's effectively impossible.

Collections, even significant collections[0], are hard to keep together. I wish I had the money necessary to acquire and make accessible collections like this.

[0] I'm not saying David's collection is significant, but it is substantial, and contains many things potentially of interest.

There's obviously some nostalgia, but seeing a bunch of machines with self-contained tooling and in working order, that you could goof around in with people around you was so satisfying.

I get the complications of running all of that stack, but a part of me would be hopeful for some systemic reproductions of some environments. Something like a "mini Windows 98" with 10 games or so and that copy of QBASIC and some VB.

Guess his heirs would rather have his billions than his legacy.

http://bernstein.com/our-insights/insights/2024/whitepaper/c...

I don’t blame the sister as many do, I realize it’s his wish actually. And in some ways it’s the way it should be. The people who love the computer should keep the museum around. It’s just a shame so many wealthy tech people don’t have that love.

With all of that money it could have easily been fully funded for 100 years.

Really one of the better hands-on museums with the "lab" component. Had lots of neat digital wall displays to play with, and programmable science toys.

Only downside was location. Tried walking cause I had no idea where it really was, and super-quick realized it was way past the coliseum and almost down to the badlands warehouse district by the freight harbor. Right between the railyards. Bad mental model of Seattle distances. Signage was also really difficult to spot. https://maps.app.goo.gl/SPCCJhT7B9aBfANNA Can you even tell there's a museum there?

Weird part from my own perspective, is Gate's runs a non-profit in his spare time as a hobby(?). Even if they weren't best-bros afterward, it would still take something like finger wagging to a functionary to not have this be a PR dumpster fire.

Apparently in the US they prefer to run museums like commercial venues, so either it's a large theme park of a museum, or not at all. I see the news where houses of very notable people like Ray Bradbury[1] sold and scrapped - elsewhere they'd be made a local prodigy of a "house-museum".

1. https://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-ray-bradbu...

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 picturing something large refrigerator sized like the PDP-8 at RePC down the street. If it's cheap because it's a 20-ton white elephant that's a different story.