Born from Paul Allens desire to give back to the city where he and Bill Gates spent their early years with Microsoft, STARTUP opens Nov. 18 to the general public, and offers countless items from Allens own collection. Dozens of displays take the visitor on a tour from the computer eras dawn to the present day.
Its relics carry a certain mystic power, starting with the entrance hallways pre-revolutionary murmurs. There is a Frieden S10 calculator from the 1930s. IBM 700 Series vacuum tubes sit before an ancient Big Blue ad describing them as “fingers you can count on.” A television plays a public information movie about “machines that can practically think,” a self-parodying artifact of the 1950s. Behind a glass screen stands a UNIVAC 1 mainframes control desk. Upon it is an OQO, nearly invisible amid the electromechanical monoliths myriad of buttons of lights.
“Its educating people about history,” Aydelott said. “When I started university, I was using punchcards. When I left I was using an Apple.”
And where is the city Paul Allen and Bill Gates spent their “early years”? Why it’s Albuquerque — and Startup is in our very own New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.
[As elsewhere, the apostrophe key appears not to work at Gear Factor.]