Alexander Bell demonstrates wireless transmission of voice - 2 minutes of history

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Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Bell demonstrates wireless transmission of voice 4 years after inventing the telephone. Podcast story teller is Curtis Anderson N4ON curator of the Telephone Museum in Richmond, Virginia. Podcast made during his visit to the Bugbook Historical Microcomputer Museum in Floyd Virginia.





Alexander Bell demonstrates wireless transmission of voice 4 years after inventing the telephone.

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Curtis Anderson at N4USA
amateur radio station

Curtis Anderson N4ON at the amateur radio station N4USA in our "Bugbook Historical Microcomputer Museum" in Floyd, Virginia. 

Here is an audio description of our N4USA radio station. 

David Larsen

Thank you for the visit Curtis - it was fun to talk about vintage computers, ham radio and old times during our careers of 30 or more years ago.

           .^{"by David Larsen"  KK4WW Computer Collector Historian} 

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Computer Museum a look inside with Assistant Student Curator

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Bryan Dowd - Assistant Museum Curtor

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Bryan C. Dowd amateur radio operator KG4ZKA is a big help as assistant student curator in our museum. Bryan has an interest in computers & history and these vintage computers are fun for him work with. He welcomes visitors and gives them a full tour of our museum and helps them with our active vintage gaming stations. We have several Commodore 64's and other vintage games.



Bryan's experience as curator & look inside museum -short Video

Apple-1 display

Bryan greets visitors from his desk at the front door - gives them a first class tour including demonstrating the operational Apple-1 software.

Vintage computer display

We have a PDP-11 minicomputer - next to Bryan - The minicomputer is used (cost as much as a house in early 70's) to tell why there was such an interest the low first cost microcomputers like the MITS Altair 8800 (January 1975).  When Ed Roberts put his Altair on the market in January 1975 he told the banker 500 sales were likely. The demand for his simple $400 Altair exceded 4000 in a few months.

Byran and PDP11 Mini Computer

A different view of the museum from the other side of the PDP - 11 minicomputer. Just to the left of Bryan is an ASR 33 teletype and this is always of interest. I don't remember what these sold for in those days but it seems like it was about $2000 - Just today hp printers were on sale for $59.  So many stories and comparisons to tell our visitor about --- where & when the microcomputer revolution compared to today. Moore's Law continues to work just fine with technology leaping ahead at warp speed.

Visitor at Gaming Station

One of our visitors fascinated with active vintage gaming stations. During the Fall of 2014 graduate student Grayson Van Beuren studied and did research in the museum as a "Graduate Independent Study Program".  One of Grayson's projects was setting up the gaming computer stations.

Vintage Amateur Radio's

We have the active amateur radio station N4USA in the museum. Our displays include the story of electronics and amateur radio communications from the Crystal Radio days of the early 1900's to the present day.

N4USA amateur radio station

Amateur Radio station N4USA is part of the "Foundation for Amateur International Radio Service"  (FAIRS) -- a non profit foundation with the mission statement of "International Good Will Through Amateur Radio" . The LCF Group has been directing the activities for FAIRS for 22 years with projects in many countries. The "LCF Group" consists of myself David Larsen KK4WW, Gaynell Larsen KK4WWW & Dee Wallace KG4VMI. Station location is in the "Bugbook Historical Microcomputer Museum" 

Bryan Dowd , Computer Warehouse

Bryan visits the computer warehouse where David Larsen's 40 years of collecting microcomputers are stored. The inventory is cataloged and packed tightly on shelves. All the inventory is marked, entered into our museum database (Past Perfect Software). The location of each item is part of the database making it easy to locate one of the approximately 10,000 items.

Computer Museum Lounge 

The museum has a small lounge area for guest. This is great place for personal networking and relaxing.

David Larsen

We are all pleased to have Bryan helping with our computer collection and in the museum as assistant curator. He is doing a great job and learning real fast to tell the stories of  vintage computers.

.^{"by David Larsen"  KK4WW Computer Collector Historian}   
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Computer Museum Assistant Curator Emily Wilson is off to College

Floyd, Virginia 

LR David Larsen - Emily Wilson 

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I am sad and glad today 11-25-14. Sad because Emily Wilson is leaving the position  of Assistant Museum Curator and glad because she is attending college to pursue a degree as a medical laboratory technician. I am always happy for our staff to move on to pursue their dreams.  Emily began work as Assistant Curator after High School graduation last June and has been a tremendous help to improve our museum. She worked on improving all the displays and was a great host to museum visitors.We will miss Emily and can only wish her well in this new adventure and career.

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LR David Larsen - Emily Wilson 

Here is me your Museum Curator with Emily and some of our 20 cabinets and shelves of displays that she helped make into a welcome experience for our visitors. Emily helped make video's, QR codes for hearing a description of a vintage computer with a smart phone by just clicking on the code, writing description of many displays - & much more. Emily was great as assistant curator in our museum. Thank You , Emily for all the help.

Alice Cox - Planting trees at Chantilly RV Park

Alice Cox  has been helping at our Chantilly Farm and  occasionally at the museum. Alice will be working as Assistant Curator off and on as time allows. Alice came to work the same time as Emily after High School Graduation last Spring. Alice and Emily both started as Summer Interns and continued working into the Fall. Alice was off to college at Virginia Tech this fall however she had a great opportunity when voted in as the state office for FFA as state Recorder & continued here at the LCF group.  Her position with FFA for the year is not full time and when not assisting the FFA Alic is working with our LCF Group. Alice is mostly working as a manager at of the grounds at our Chantilly Farm just a few miles from the museum. We are delighted with the assistance Alice has provided as we develop the farm festival venue and new full service RV and Camp grounds.  She will continue her work here at the museum and farm for this school year and then start at Virginia Tech in the fall of 2015 working on her Agricultural Education degree.  We are sure happy to have her here for until she is off to college in the Fall of 2015.

David Larsen

We are all home for the Thanksgiving Holiday - several of our  team were without power for a few days but all is OK now Friday November 28th.  At our house we will have about 32 family members here for dinner - this is day after Thanksgiving however two turkeys are ready to be served. A Happy and Great Thanksgiving to all our readers and we will miss Emily when we start back at the Museum on Monday.

.^{"by David Larsen"  KK4WW Computer Collector Historian}   
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Vintage Computer Museum - Curator's make historical microcomputer collection organized !

The collection of our historical microcomputers and computer memorabilia has been in the making for more than 40 years. During the last 5 years we have been developing a small representative display here in Floyd Virginia. This is a work in progress and I have been greatly assisted by three Summer student office assistants (Curators). In addition to helping with the small display the total collection is in the process of being entered into a digital database.  A lot of work goes into making the collection useful, displays, video's, web presence, data entry, moving lot of computer things, picture taking, story boards, recordings, cleaning, packing , shipping, talking to folks that come into the museum display -- the list is very long.  The assistant curators have been a really big help and I want to give them credit and have you meet them. David Larsen - the Computer Collector  Send a Tweet'CLICK' hashtag #KK4WW if you enjoy the blog or have a comment
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   Amber Ingram in her own words as assistant curator.

Three years ago I helped begin the inventory journey to produce a Bugbook Historical Microcomputer Museum. My jobs have consisted of taking detailed inventory of computers, calculators, radios and such of historical value that David has collected over a number of years and placing the items into the first established Bugbook Historical Microcomputer Museum, located in the Village Green. The process has been long and is still ongoing but we have made huge progress in entering the inventory into Past Perfect. Our contributions will help those working on the project in later years to know exactly what David possess. The "Bugbook Historical Microcomputer Museum" is a dream of David’s and one day the hard work put into this project will show the history and the value of the items that he has collected.
-Amber
                             Video of Amber's design work in the museum display 'CLICK'.
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Rina Van Blerk on the left and Amber Ingram working on computer collection data files. Rina, Amber and Nate did special work cleaning, taking photos & inventorying about 500 calculators - this was in addition to all the normal curator work.

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                                         Rina Van Blerk in her own words as Assistant Curator

Past Perfect Work
July 18, 2013
Over the past three years, we have been helping Mr. Dave Larsen transfer the Bugbook Historical Microcomputer Museum items from paper to Past Perfect, a very detailed inventory program. This summer, new inventory numbers were given to several items which lacked them - allowing the items to be placed on display in the Village Green Suite. In addition, calculators have received a majority of our attention. I am currently adding pictures to Past Perfect and updating minor details such as descriptions and conditions. I printed several reports showing the inventory contents of particular boxes. We are working hard to make this goal of a historical computer museum a reality. The work is tedious, but necessary – and serves as valuable information in the future.
-Rina  -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                                         Nate Cleveland in his own words as Assistant Curator

As the newest intern working for David, my first year was spent helping with the massive project of transferring David’s collection of computers, calculators, and radios from his paper inventory to an online database, Past Perfect. This involves transcribing detailed notes about every item in David’s collection into a format that is easily accessible and allows one to search for specific items. While the process of entering the data may be a long one, it will be necessary to organize David’s collection and help display even more of it in the Bugbook Historical Microcomputer Museum for all technology enthusiasts to enjoy. We are making constant progress on the project and are happy to see all of our hard work become a reality.
-Nate ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I recommend hiring students as summer office assistants/interns.
Here at the LCF Group in Floyd Virginia we have employed student assistants for the past 7 years. The advantages for our group and the students are tremendous.  The students are highly motivated to work and learn skills that will help them in any full time career after graduating.  They often return each summer and become very productive members of our staff .  We like to hire students from our local high school for 1 or 2 summers and they often return 3 or 4 addition summers during college. A summer job is very hard to find in our little town and the students are pleased to have meaningful paid work and be home during school breaks. The additional skilled help allows our office the flexibility to keep a full staff while some are on summer vacation, mission trips, and  family gatherings.  The summer office assistants/interns are just great and fun to work with - keeps us all thinking younger.  Thank you for the great help.
"by David Larsen" KK4WW Computer Collector/Historian