Computer Museum of America - Grand opining July 20,2019

Computer Museum ofAmerica

The Grand Opening 

Computer Museum of America
 Roswell, Georgia - July 20,2019
Up Dated 10/5/2020

Our entire historical microcomputer collection (Bugbook Microcomputer Museum) of 13,000 items was acquired by the Computer Museum of America. David Larsen

See videos of displays 10/5/2020 "CLICK"

Click photo to enlarge.

David and Gaynell Larsen during the
Grand Opening of the Museum
at the  Apollo 11 Moon lander replica.  

The grand opening of the Computer Museum of America (CMoA) was an awesome event. The date was picked to to be the same day of the year on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing - July 20th.  The museum founder,  Lonnie Mimms,  is a long time collector of computers and  user of  computers. The museum has so many exciting attributes & amenities it is hard for me to give proper credit in a short blog. Take a look at the Facebook Page here. Look here of wonderful photos of the opening.

Lonnie Mimms museum
founder giving introduction
to the museum at the
Fundraiser event July 13th

From Computer Museum of America - Web Site
"After 40 years of collecting technology and four years of testing temporary exhibitions, the Computer Museum of America (CMoA) will be opening the doors to its new permanent home on July 20,2019. The CMoA will preserve the achievements of the digital revolution to educate, entertain and inspire the innovator in us all."

Karin Mimms
Vice President of the
Museum

Karin Mimms - Vice President speaks about goals of museum and introducing special guests at the Friday ( 7/13/19) Fundraiser  Event.
The opening week was in three parts - The Fundraiser Event on Friday the 13th, the Opening Celebration on Wednesday the 17th and the Grand opening for the public on Saturday the 20th.

David Larsen with NASA Astronaut
Dr. Sandra Magnus

NASA Astronaut Dr. Sandra Magnus was a very inspirational speaker about how her dream as a young person led to become a NASA Astronaut. Dr. Magnus made several shuttle flights and spent time on the Space Station. She is a wonderful enthusiastic advocate encouraging young people to pursue a career in STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math).  One the museums mission is to inspire young folks to develop an interest & career in the the field of science (STEM).

Cray 1-M/2300

The museum has a wonderful representation of computers and technology items on display with great information about each artifact. The museum has one of the largest collection of Cray Super Computers in the world.

Cray 1 Serial #13
1979

This information came in the shipping container with the Cray-A.

Amazing supercomputer at that time.

50 miles of wire
32,000 circuit cards
250,000 integrated circuits.
Much more click photo to read.

Digital Equipment Corporation
"PDP-12"

The museum displays an excellent selection of Super Computers, Minicomputers, Microcomputers and some components of historical mainframe computers.  This just the Grand Opening - there are 250,000 artifacts in the archives and the number of artifacts on display will be growing and rotating on a regular basis.

David Larsen
with Mark 8 Computer

The museum has a good representation of Microcomputers on display - you can see some of them in the photos here.

The "Mark 8" computer in this photo was designed by my colleague Dr. Jon Titus.  Jon published his design in "Radio Electronics" magazine in the May, June and July issues 1974. Jon is given credit for being the one of the first to build an operational computer using a microprocessor chip and showing others how to build the computer.

.

Dr. Cyndy Moya  with
 Lonnie Mimms 

The museum had a large number of interesting visitors for the Grand Opening day.  Here is Dr. Cyndy Moya, Collections Manager at the "Living Computer Museum" in Seattle, Washington. On the right is Lonnie Mimms, Founder of the "Computer Museum of America". The "Living Computer Museum" founder was Paul Allen.

IBM  card sorter, collator etc

Some items on display from the old mainframe computers. Here are peripheral devices from the 1950/60s . A  key card punch, collator, card sorter and more.






Here is my audio description of the aswsome events during the Inaugural Opening of the Museum

My son, David Larsen Jr.,
at the July 13th Fundraiser

Visiting the CMoA and Roswell, GA for the the week of July 13- 20th Grand opening events for the museum was a very rewarding experience for Gaynell and I. To be with Lonnie and Karin Mimms and all the people that helped make Lonni's vision of a great computer and technology museum a reality was awesome.

This is just a start and the museum will be constantly evolving and expanding.  Lonnie has more than 250,000 technology artifacts in the collection with more being added every week. The museum has a second level floor of about 120,000 sq ft for expansion and more could be added - lots of room for expansion.

Museum Entrance at
5000 Commerce Parkway.

When in the Roswell, Georgia area,  I highly recommend a visit to the museum (About 20 miles north of Atlanta). The CMoA is open on Saturdays 10 to 5 PM and on Sunday 12 to 5 PM. Here is how to get there - Google Map. 

David Larsen
 Blog Author

"by David Larsen"  Board member of  "Computer Museum of America", Chantilly Farm owner, Computer Historian, and amateur radio operator -KK4WW   & N4USA .  I work out of one of the Tiny Homes at Chantilly Farm. A great place to work if you like the to be out in nature. I am 81 and ready to sell Chantilly Farm - I have a few more  projects I would like to do - if you have an interest to know more give me a call. 540 392  2392.

The "Bugbook"
Bugs

I am still collecting vintage computers & receive a calls very often about an old computer. Getting older and time to sell my chantillyfarm  -- Give me a call for information..

Vintage computers - "iWoz" Steve Wozniak's book by Wozniak & Smith - My comments - a good read

info click

Anyone having an interest in the Apple Computer company and how it all started will really enjoy this book. Steve's book has been in print for 8 years - if you missed it now is a good time do your read. Their are many reasons for the tremendous success of Apple however it all started with Steve Wozniak

Click image to enlarge

designing the Apple 1 microcomputer.  Their were many good breaks as the company developed and sometimes just being in the right place at the right time was a big help. Steve Jobs convinced Wozniak to sell his Apple 1 computer and was the marketing guru that made the company grow to what it is today and those first months of the start up are very interesting.

Did you know that the first partnership of the Apple company included 3 people not just the 2 Steve's. Ron Wayne was in on the  original official founding and actually is the one who wrote the partnership agreement and at that time owned 10 percent of the Apple company? Only 12 days after the partnership Ron dropped out and received about $800 for his interest. CNN story about Ron Wayne.

Wozniak as Woz

Steve Wozniak ( Steve often goes by just Woz ) designed the Apple 1 and Apple ll totally on his own and also wrote the initial software monitor and Basic program.  Steve was and is a very smart and clever designer.  Woz wanted to give the plans of the Apple 1 for free and in fact did so at Homebrew Computer Club meetings. Of course without the Apple 1 their would be no Apple Company today.

The first sale made by Steve Jobs was just a few days after the original partnership was signed and he sold 50 Apple 1's to Paul Terrell owner of Byte Shop. It could be that without this sale their would be no Apple Computer Company today.

Zaltair computer - steve wozniak

 "Zaltair Computer"      A really great practical joke that Steve Wozniak  pulled of at the First West Coast Computer Faire in April 1977.  Steve says in his book "iWoz" that he likes to do practical jokes and have someone else get blamed for doing the joke. In the case of the Zaltair he did a very good job and did not get accused of being the originator of the joke in fact Gary Ingram at Processor Technology was the one accursed of doing the hoax. The hoax was directed toward the Ed Roberts and his Mitts Altair 8800 microcomputer. Steve called his friend Adam Schoolsky to come help with this hoax.

More about the Zaltair.




   Woz with Apple 1

Photo by Dan Sokol

I recommend reading the book to learn in Woz's words about the start up of the Apple company and his own story. It is worth a second read if you like history and these fascinating story's told by Woz. The book "iWoz" published in 2006 and was on the New York Times best seller list.

David Larsen

I had the opportunity to read this book for a second time and I learned many new interesting story's  about Wozniak and the Apple Computer Company - a good read

.^{"by David Larsen"  KK4WW Computer Collector Historian}   
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Vintage computer Zaltair brochure from 1977 West Coast Computer Faire

I see a lot of interest in this Zaltair brochure and it has been reported that no good images of the back of brochure are  available on the web so here are just the images.  You can see the story about the Zaltair computer here "CLICK"

Zaltair Brochure Front

Zaltair Brochure Back

David g Larsen

                                       "by David Larsen" 
                                       ^{KK4WW Computer Collector Historian}   
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Vintage Computers - Apple ll Computer Pirates - The Franklin Computers 'Clones of Apple ll computers'

Bugbooks

Steve Wozniak spent several years developing the Apple 1 computer before he and Steve Jobs actually brought the computer to market. It was a wonderful design at that time however hobbyist were not willing to purchase or able to make working Apple 1 computers in very large numbers. Only 200 Apple 1 computers were made and not all of them were actually sold.  The Apple 1 required the addition of power transformers, keyboard and a  display to make an operating system. Even then it was crude looking if a display case was not custom made for the computer.  The short story is the computer did not sell well and Wozniak realized a plug and play computer was needed and started the design of the Apple ll soon after the Apple 1 was put on the commercial market.

The Apple ll was a tremendous success for the Apple Company - selling 5 to 6 million from 1977 to 1993 ( according to information in Wikipedia ).

1982 Enter Franklin Computer with a Clone of the Apple ll
                        "the Franklin Ace 100" 
 The Franklin Company wanted to cash in on the large following of purchasers of the Apple ll computer and the Ace 100 was almost an exact digital copy. The monitor program in ROM was also an exact copy of the the Apple ll ROM.
 

Ace 100

Ace 100

Ace 100

This Ace 100 computer for sale








 March 1982 the Franklin Computer Company released the Ace 1000 a copy of the Apple ll+.

Ace 1000

Ace 1000

Ace 1000

 The Apple Company did not take this lightly and in June 1982 sued  the Franklin Computer Company for copyright infringement. Initially Apple lost the case and Franklin continued to sell their clone computers. The next Franklin computer was the Ace 1200 and it was the same as the Ace 1000 with additional features. The Ace 1200 came with 2 floppy drives built in and it also had and 8080 CPU on a plug in card and could execute CP/M programs as well as the Apple ll software.  The Ace 1200 had upper and lower case characters and a color display.

Ace 1200

Ace 1200

Ace 1200

 The Apple Company did win the infringement case in 1983 however the Franklin Company received an injunction and was able to continue making the Ace Apple clone computers.  The numbers I have found indicate that the Franklin Company sold these computers in the 10,000 + range.

Franklin continued to develop additional computers -  Ace 500 an Apple llc clone and Ace 2000 an Apple lle clone. In 1986 - 1988 the Ace PC 6000 & Ace PC8000 both IBM PC clones were brought to market. The hand held small computer line of Franklin products was introduced with such products as spelling correction, dictionary definitions and a thesaurus. The production of Franklin desk top computers ended in the late 80's.

The  Franklin Computer Company  merged with Saunders Acquisition Corporation September 30, 2009.

The computer photo's in this blog are from our "Bugbook Historical Microcomputer Museum". Our collection includes most all of  the Franklin computers.

Many companies made Apple ll clones - mostly they were from China or Taiwan. Their were dozens of these clones however none of them were really a success. The Apple Computer Company put most of them out of business quickly. It would be interesting to hear of anyone who has made a collection of Apple clone computers.

David Larsen

Space Museum

This has been a busy and fun two weeks with our friends Clement & Hetty  Pierre Louis visiting from Dominica. We just returned from taking them to Dullas airport for a Saturday morning departure back home. Friday we toured the  Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center | National Air and Space Museum near the Dullas airport. If you have the opportunity to visit this is a great air museum with a Space Shuttle and an SR 51 spy plane + 300 or so other very interesting planes. The tour guide told lots of really good stories about many of the planes and the folks associated with them. The Imax theater there has great shows.


  ^{"By David Larsen" KK4WW Computer Collector Historian}   
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Vintage Computers - Apple Computer Historical data

The LCF Group has several Apple 1 computers in our "Bugbook Historical Microcomputer Museum" and the stories about the early start up days of Apple Company are always of interest.

Steven Wayhrich, MD

The information below is from the website of  Steven Weyhrich,  a family practice physician in Omaha, Nebraska. Steven's writing's about Apple history is very informative and the paragraph below is directly from his web page.
  

The Start of the Apple Computer Company

Original Apple Logo

""By early 1976, Steve Wozniak had completed his 6502-based computer and would display enhancements or modifications at the bi-weekly Homebrew Computer Club meetings. Steve Jobs was a 21 year old friend of Wozniak’s and also a visitor at the Homebrew club. He had worked with Wozniak in the past (together they designed the arcade game “Breakout” for Atari) and was very interested in his computer. During the design process Jobs made suggestions that helped shape the final product, such as the use of the newer dynamic RAMs instead of older, more expensive static RAMs. He suggested to Wozniak that they get some printed circuit boards made for the computer and sell it at the club for people to assemble themselves. They pooled their financial resources together to have PC boards made, and on April 1st, 1976 they officially formed the Apple Computer Company. Jobs had recently worked at an organic apple orchard, and liked the
name because “he thought of the apple as the perfect fruit–it has a high nutritional content, it comes in a nice package, it doesn’t damage easily–and he wanted Apple to be the perfect company. Besides, they couldn’t come up with a better name.”  "" The above from Steven Weyhrich's website.

Read the whole story on Steven's website about how the Apple Computer Company was started by Jobs and Wozniak in 1976.


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David & Gaynell 

Larsen

The interest in the Apple Computer Company is on the increase almost daily now. Several movies are being  produced about Steve Jobs and these increase buzz about Apple Inc. I was working  in the early days of microcomputers  as faculty member at Virginia Tech and a member of the Blackburg Group.

"by David Larsen" KK4WW    Computer Collector/Historian

Vintage Apple 1 Computer sells for over $600,000 at Breker auction 5-25-13

                                                                   Original »Apple 1 Computer«, 1976

This is the sensational 1st product of today's highest-valued company ever. This »Apple 1« set on offer here is 100 % authentic and in full working condition! Already a legendary milestone from the  dynamic dawn of the personal computer age! Sensational World Record Price by Auction Team Breker set on 25 May 2013: Euro 516.461,- / US$ 671,400.- (!) / £ 441,000.-

                                      The above from Breker web site.

Bob Luther

Bob Luther - Apple 1 owner and author of his new book "The First Apple" - he writes about  his and other Apple 1's. Bob was able to attended the Breker Auction  and had a great time.  Bob has done some very interesting research and interviews with the folks still living that started the Apple Computer Company and built the Apple 1 computers in Steve Jobs  parents home.

Ron Wayne

Bob traveled to California to interview Ron Wayne one of the original founders of the Apple Computer Company along with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.  Ron is 79 years old and most folks do not know he was part of the original Apple partnership.

 Interview by Bloomburg TV about Bob Luther's Apple 1 Computer. 

Bob has made arrangements for Ron to sign photos of his computer and a book plate.  You can get some of these original signatures of Ron Wayne by participating it the Kickstarter program to help publish Mr. Luther's book.

"Apple co-founder Ron Wayne has worked with me on his part of the story of the beginning of Apple and his time with Jobs. And he has designed the bookplate, to commemorate the moment of the birth of the original Apple partnership. I did have those printed and Ron has already signed some of them, along with some photos. He's 79 years old, so although he seems to be in fine health, I wanted to make sure that we could deliver on that part of the project, so his signatures are partially completed." Quote From Bob Luther on Kickstarter.

 "Sold - Antique Apple 1 Brings $671K" By Gregg Keizer at 'Computer World'

" Yet, Apple was not the first Personal Computer on the market. The seeds for its success had already been sown by other pioneering machines such as Nat Wadsworth’s 1973 "Scelbi-8H" (estimate Euro 15,000 – 20,000 / US$ 20,000 – 25,000). The "Scelbi" ticked all the boxes for commercial viability: it was built around the first Intel 8-Bit microprocessor (the so-called "CPU-on-a-chip"), within the budget of an average person, and available either assembled or in kit form. It was the first truly "Personal Computer"(!). Yet, it was a financial failure; only 200 units were produced, and only 3 (!!) have survived today !!!" This information about the Scelbi is from the
                                    The Specialists in »Technical Antiques & Fine Toys«

 I am happy to say we have one of the Scelbi microcomputers in our "Bugbook Historical Microcomputer Museum".

Here is opportunity to get one of first copies of Bob Luther's Apple 1 book and  original signature of Ron Wayne .   Go here Kickstarter

This is really exciting for me as an Apple 1 owner. After reviewing the information about Bob Luther's Apple 1 I realized I had been offered this computer years ago by the law firm working on settling some litigation by owner of the Apple 1. I still have the letters from the law firm but I did feel I could pay the price the law firm was asking.  I am sure happy to see this Apple 1 computer surface and that Bob Luther as the current owner.

 Please go to my Museum Page on Facebook and do a like for me.  Thank You for the help.


The weather here in Floyd Virginia has turned warm and sunny - just great. Our 3rd Annual Bluegrass Festival at Chantilly farm was really well attended last Saturday. It was fun working with all the musicians and our lead band ' Doyle Lawson and the Quicksilver's. It was real exciting to see his big bus roll into Chantilly Farm. Now I can return to some work with my 'Bugbook Historical Microcomputer Museum' 
"by David Larsen" KK4WW Computer Collector/Historian