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The past of a future science.
From March 5th to March 29th a revamped version of the successful exhibition “Computing Antiques” will be on show at l’Illa Diagonal in Barcelona, a venue visited but thousands every day. A wider audience will be able to see curious and important relics of computing gathered by LSI professors Jordi Delgado and J.A. Pastor with the help of many others.
In 2007 the Barcelona School of Informatics (Facultat d’Informatica de Barcelona, FIB for short) celebrated its 30th anniversary. Professors Jordi Delgado and Joan Antoni Pastor, both from the LSI department, and professor Josep Amat organized the exhibition “Computing Antics” which gathered old and rare computers, calculating tools, books, and memorabilia related to computing.
Most of the materials on display came from private collections, like the one that professor Delgado has been building up year after year and turned his office into a space crammed with old personal computers.
The exhibition became unexpectedly a media hit. It was shown on major TV networks and spawned a lot of interest in several daily and weekly publications. It resonated with something within the general public.
Several organizations became interested in hosting new versions of the exhibition. In this case, it is a very popular mall in BCN but other institutions are on the waiting list. This time professors Delgado and Pastor have received help from Elvira Pallàs of the staff at FIB and the Vicedean Josep Hernández.
Most of the materials on display came from private collections, like the one that professor Delgado has been building up year after year and turned his office into a space crammed with old personal computers.
The exhibition became unexpectedly a media hit. It was shown on major TV networks and spawned a lot of interest in several daily and weekly publications. It resonated with something within the general public.
Several organizations became interested in hosting new versions of the exhibition. In this case, it is a very popular mall in BCN but other institutions are on the waiting list. This time professors Delgado and Pastor have received help from Elvira Pallàs of the staff at FIB and the Vicedean Josep Hernández.
Origins
Commodore: a pioneering PC
In any case, the 30th years of the FIB, put this school historically in a middle ground. Some of the last turning points of computing have been a first hand life experience both for its professors and students.
Cardboard and phosphor
In this exhibition one can find personal computers from the seventies and eighties side by side with the legendary Digital Equipment Corporation PDP and VAX processors. Some CRT green or orange phosphor screen workstations are also on display and have a definitely “retro” appeal now.
Donations also include some mechanic computing devices. For example, slide rules, some of them very peculiar, are also shown in the exhibition, much to the amazement of the younger ones who have a hard time in connecting a rule with a computer as they know it.
Much more than a machine
Looking on one computing object after another, visitors can feel that this is a machine like no other and maybe this is the reason of the strong appeal of this antics. Computing may be related to calculation but the discipline reveals more than that, a truly new way of thinking that has impacted on several other disciplines. “Computing” says Jordi Delgado, is, in fact, “different to other disciplines, it has to be understood in its own terms. A technique, a science and art, computing creates worlds that never had existed before. The revolution created by the first computer is not comparable to any other revolution”.
Paul E. Ceruzzi in “History of Modern Computing” quoting a colleague, explained that when he (Ceruzzi) told him he wanted to study the history of computers, his colleague retorted “Why computers? Why not washing machines?”. Still in the eighties, there was no proper assessment of the singularity that computers and computing bring in. That singular spirit can sensed in the way that the organizers of the exhibition talked about it, about computers and about computing. And it shows up in the way that this objects from the past talk to people.
Press contact:
ilapuente@lsi.upc.edu