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

[Aron Insinga <aki@insinga.com>]

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guidance computer, or someone's unpublished notes from lectures) at 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)