[TUHS] Re: Sad but not unexpected news about the LCM-L

[TUHS] Re: Sad but not unexpected news about the LCM-L

[Noel Chiappa]

    >  <clemc@ccc.com>

    > In particular, I hope the PDP-7s and the CDC-6500 find new homes.

Also, their collection of PDP-10's, which is absolutely unrivalled; they
had a KA10 and a KI10; also the MIT-MC KL10.

Also a Multics front panel; AFAIK, the ony one in the world other than the
CHM's. Any idea where it's all being sold? I might enquire about the Multics
panel.

	Noel

[TUHS] Re: Sad but not unexpected news about the LCM-L

[Al Kossow]

On 6/25/24 11:45 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>  Any idea where it's all being sold?

The only things I see are highly collectable things being
handled by Christies and very little of it are computer
related

[TUHS] Re: Sad but not unexpected news about the LCM-L

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: Aron <aki@insinga.com>

    > Now if only his family would take those wishes of his into account and
    > tell the lawyers to finish the job.

I suspect that was his real mistake; he trusted that his family would do what
he wanted (perhaps so that instead of putting the final bow on this, he could
pay attention to something else that was more important to him) after he was
gone - and they decided not to.


My suspicion is that there is something else that is more important to his
sister (probably political), and she decided that the pittance she'd get from
flushing the LCM would be better put towards her project(s).

I've just been re-reading Thucydides' extraordinarily outstanding meditation
on the revolution on Corcyra (which is really a meditation on the death of
the Greek polei - and is a pre-epitaph on the death of many democracies
since), and if my pupposition is correct, it applies to this too


I wonder what'll happen to all the less-valuable stuff that was given to the
LCM? A PDP-10 will fetch 10K's of $, but a lot of the rest is worth pennies.
I hope they don't scrap it for pennies, or throw it in the trash. I'm sure
that someone who would ignore her brother's wishes about important pieces
of history that meant a lot to him would have no qualms about doing either.

	Noel

[TUHS] Re: Sad but not unexpected news about the LCM-L

[Al Kossow]

On 6/27/24 8:19 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote:

> I wonder what'll happen to all the less-valuable stuff that was given to the
> LCM? A PDP-10 will fetch 10K's of $, but a lot of the rest is worth pennies.
> I hope they don't scrap it for pennies, or throw it in the trash. I'm sure
> that someone who would ignore her brother's wishes about important pieces
> of history that meant a lot to him would have no qualms about doing either.
> 
> 	Noel
> 

Here are the 990s for LCM. It appears to vanish with no assets in 2019
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/822852303

[TUHS] Re: Sad but not unexpected news about the LCM-L

[John Levine]

It appears that Al Kossow <aek@bitsavers.org> said:
>Here are the 990s for LCM. It appears to vanish with no assets in 2019

Guidestar has their 990s up through 2023.

The 2023 one is pretty pitiful, income of $2000, expenses of $1100,

It shows $39K in cash, $122K in other assets which I presume are the
stuff, $52K in accounts payable.

In 2022 they gave $1.1M to the Flying Heritage & Combat Armor museum,
one of his other museums. That museum closed and reopened last year as
part of the Wartime History Museum run by a Wal-Mart heir.

R's,
John

[TUHS] Sad but not unexpected news about the LCM-L

[Clem Cole]

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https://www.geekwire.com/2024/seattles-living-computers-museum-logs-off-for-good-as-paul-allen-estate-will-auction-vintage-items/

These folks hosted the UNIX 50th Celebration and had a physical PDP-7 that
was used to bring up UNIX V0 (after first getting it running on SIMH). That
later was not easy because the original PDP-7s (like the one Ken had access
to) did not have disk storage. BTL had paid DEC's Custom Special Systems
(CSS) to splice a Burrough's disk that DEC was selling using for the 15 and
later the PDP-9.   It started with splicing reverse engineering that code
to build a simulation of that disk into the simh, so we could ensure that
UNIX ran—finally, modeling that HW with a custom microprocessor-based board
with an SD card with a functional replica of a PDP-7 I/O interface on one
side obeying the device registers and operations that UNIX expected to see.

The LCM-L folks were incredibly gracious and generous. I am so sad to see
their collection go away. In particular, I hope the PDP-7s and the CDC-6500
find new homes.

Clem

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[TUHS] Re: Sad but not unexpected news about the LCM-L

[Aron Insinga]

I am not a lawyer, but as I've mentioned before, people building a 
collection or creating a Museum should form a non-profit organization 
(with a business plan to support it) to take ownership of it and keep it 
out of the estate, because there is no guarantee one's heirs will give a 
$#!^ about any of it other than for the gold that can be harvested from 
it.  Do it straight away because you likely won't know in advance of 
when your time is up.

And even if all you have is one or a few items (let's say, a missile 
guidance computer, or someone's unpublished notes from lectures) at 
least make sure you have a valid will to try very hard to require it to 
be sent someplace that can accept it, or that will appoint (a) 
right-thinking representative(s) to handle said item(s).

Or at least make sure you've actually succeeded in educating your family 
on the importance of said items, and places that can accept them.

As someone from the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum once said to me, 
"They [TCM=>CHM] were lucky to get that, we don't have one."

But IMHO the LCM might be the biggest such failure of responsibility to 
computing history ever.

Best,

- Aron (a docent at The Computer Museum when it was at DEC in Marlborough)

[TUHS] Re: Sad but not unexpected news about the LCM-L

[Larry McVoy]

This is almost completely unrelated but somewhat in the "write your
will/trust the right way".

My dad made me trustee of their estate.  OK, fine.   He passed first,
then my mom passed and there was a decent amount, not a lot but enough
you'd notice it.  3 kids, divided equally.  But I had made enough money
that it seemed unfair to me to take my third when my brother, a PhD from
Cornell, was busy convincing everyone that how they were going about
saving the Everglades was wrong, and he was broke.  I could just hear
my dad saying "Larry, you are fine, Chris is not".

So I gave him my third but it is a pain in the butt.  You can only
gift so much each year without a tax implication.  

The point being that none of the trust people had ever heard of, or
thought of, the idea that one of the kids would be willing to give
up their share.

Since we're mostly old folks, maybe put something in your trust that
says any kid can yield any portion to whoever they want and it is as
if you wrote that into the trust/will.  We did that with our trust 
and the lawyer had to be told 3 times.  She kept saying that's not
what happens, the kids argue about they should get more, nobody
says they should get less.  Turns out I'm the odd ball.

On Tue, Jun 25, 2024 at 08:56:43PM -0400, Aron Insinga wrote:
> I am not a lawyer, but as I've mentioned before, people building a
> collection or creating a Museum should form a non-profit organization (with
> a business plan to support it) to take ownership of it and keep it out of
> the estate, because there is no guarantee one's heirs will give a $#!^ about
> any of it other than for the gold that can be harvested from it.?? Do it
> straight away because you likely won't know in advance of when your time is
> up.
> 
> And even if all you have is one or a few items (let's say, a missile
> guidance computer, or someone's unpublished notes from lectures) at least
> make sure you have a valid will to try very hard to require it to be sent
> someplace that can accept it, or that will appoint (a) right-thinking
> representative(s) to handle said item(s).
> 
> Or at least make sure you've actually succeeded in educating your family on
> the importance of said items, and places that can accept them.
> 
> As someone from the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum once said to me, "They
> [TCM=>CHM] were lucky to get that, we don't have one."
> 
> But IMHO the LCM might be the biggest such failure of responsibility to
> computing history ever.
> 
> Best,
> 
> - Aron (a docent at The Computer Museum when it was at DEC in Marlborough)
> 

-- 
---
Larry McVoy           Retired to fishing          http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat

[TUHS] Re: Sad but not unexpected news about the LCM-L

[George Michaelson]

I understand property on the mall is expensive, but the smithsonian
has adjunct/allied/associated museums not on the mall.

You would think somebody in Maynard would fund oh, I don't know.. an
old Mill structure to be repurposed as a museum? Or many in Armonk?

The Indy "this belongs in a museum" really needs a rider: A nationally
recognized, affiliated, publicly endowable museum.

Full marks to Paul Allen to keep the stuff. He did a useful thing.

-G

[TUHS] Re: Sad but not unexpected news about the LCM-L

[aki]

They did, in one of DEC's buildings in Marlborough, Massachusetts: The 
Digital Computer Museum dba The Computer Museum.  Later it moved to 
Boston in the same building as the Children's Museum there; space that 
was used by an automobile museum for a while.  After the End of the Age 
of Minicomputers, it moved to California and eventually became the 
Computer History Museum.  MIT Lincoln Lab took back the TX-0 and 
disassembled it to some extent so that it could be moved and put into 
storage, where it sits, in a classified facility which we mere insecure 
civilians can't access.  A few things were on display in The Science 
Museum in Boston (it inherited the Massachusetts non-profit organization 
of TCM IIUC) but I think they've been moved to CHM too.  And at least 
some of those giants have now passed away too.

And make that an actually *endowed* museum.  I've been reminded that 
Allen also created a Science Fiction Museum and a Rock & Roll Museum.  
The SF has been merged into the R&R because that's the one that will 
probably sell enough tickets to keep paying the bills and the staff.

- Aron



On 2024-06-25 20:42, George Michaelson wrote:
...
> You would think somebody in Maynard would fund oh, I don't know.. an
> old Mill structure to be repurposed as a museum? Or many in Armonk?
> 
> The Indy "this belongs in a museum" really needs a rider: A nationally
> recognized, affiliated, publicly endowable museum.
...

[TUHS] Re: Sad but not unexpected news about the LCM-L

[Paul Guertin]

It is sad that a billionaire would create a museum but
then instruct his heirs to dismantle it upon his death,
rather than set up some kind of permanent funding
for it.

Paul Guertin

[TUHS] Re: Sad but not unexpected news about the LCM-L

[Dan Cross]

On Tue, Jun 25, 2024 at 9:44 PM Paul Guertin <paul@guertin.net> wrote:
> It is sad that a billionaire would create a museum but
> then instruct his heirs to dismantle it upon his death,
> rather than set up some kind of permanent funding
> for it.

That's not at all what happened; please, let's not write such things
that suggest that it is.

Allen was a man dying of cancer. LCM+L was important to him, but he
neglected to leave explicit instructions to set up an endowment for
it; that's unfortunate, but it was an oversight: he had other
concerns. I've talked to several of the players, and no one, not once,
has suggested that he "instructed his heirs to dismantle it upon his
death."

        - Dan C.

[TUHS] Re: Sad but not unexpected news about the LCM-L

[Paul Guertin]

Dixit Dan Cross (2024-06-25 21:46):
> On Tue, Jun 25, 2024 at 9:44 PM Paul Guertin <paul@guertin.net> wrote:
>> It is sad that a billionaire would create a museum but
>> then instruct his heirs to dismantle it upon his death,
> 
> That's not at all what happened; please, let's not write such things
> that suggest that it is.

Thank you for the correction. I read the article too quickly,
and misinterpreted the sentence

 > 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.

It is the estate's position that Allen wanted the museum's assets
to be sold, and not Allen's stated wishes.

Paul Guertin

[TUHS] Re: Sad but not unexpected news about the LCM-L

[Lars Brinkhoff]

Dan Cross wrote:
> Allen was a man dying of cancer. LCM+L was important to him, but he
> neglected to leave explicit instructions to set up an endowment for
> it; that's unfortunate, but it was an oversight: he had other
> concerns.

The oversight would be that it was done too late.  Such paperwork was in
progress, but it was not completed before his death.

[TUHS] Re: Sad but not unexpected news about the LCM-L

[aki]

It's not like this was the first time he faced cancer.  It's too bad he 
didn't take the lesson from an earlier encounter and do this decades 
ago.  Now if only his family would take those wishes of his into account 
and tell the lawyers to finish the job.

On 2024-06-26 00:36, Lars Brinkhoff wrote:
> Dan Cross wrote:
>> Allen was a man dying of cancer. LCM+L was important to him, but he
>> neglected to leave explicit instructions to set up an endowment for
>> it; that's unfortunate, but it was an oversight: he had other
>> concerns.
> 
> The oversight would be that it was done too late.  Such paperwork was 
> in
> progress, but it was not completed before his death.