Computer Museum Aachen

The Computer Museum Aachen existed from 1987 to 2009. It was created in cooperation with the Rogowski Institute for Electrical Engineering at RWTH Aachen University . It was housed in Aachen's Melaten campus until the building at Sommerfeldstrasse 32 was demolished.

history

The museum was created in collaboration with the Rogowski Institute for Electrical Engineering at RWTH Aachen University and received outdated hardware from them as museum pieces. Walter Ameling (1926–2010) was a key advocate and supporter .

The extensive collection, created from 1965 with the support of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia , the German Research Foundation and the Friends of Aachen University, was one of the earliest of its kind in Germany.

The computer museum saw itself as an active museum in which the visitor could work on numerous computing devices and PCs and gain experience with the EDP technology of the past. The computer museum was set up in 1987 on the RWTH expansion site in Melaten and closed at the end of 2009. From 1987 to 1993 the museum was headed by the historian Peter Johannes Droste .

Exhibits

The showpiece of the exhibition was a computer system of the Zuse Z22 type from the RWTH from 1958.

Some of the exhibits

• Burroughs 1700
• DEC PDP-11/45
• DEC PDP-12
• EAI 8800 Scientific Computing System
• EAI PACE 231R
• EAI TR-48
• IBM 421
• IBM System / 3 Model 10 (5410)
• IBM System / 360-20
• LGP-30
• Siemens 2002
• Telefunken RA 463/2
• Telefunken TR 4
• Zuse Z22

closure

The building in which the computer museum was housed had to be demolished in 2010 as part of the realignment of the Melaten campus. As a result, the museum had to close at the end of 2009, and all the exhibits there were looking for a new location.

The museum's background holdings were dissolved as early as 2006 and initially deposited in Castrop-Rauxel . From there, financed by SAP , a large part of the collection went to Mountain View , California, to the Computer History Museum (CHM) there, including Mulby computers made in Aachen ( Krantz Computer ). The remains were taken to a warehouse on the grounds of the Dortmund train station (Tillmann collection). There the parts were badly battered by the poor storage and were threatened with scrapping in 2012. Private collectors managed to save and restore many artifacts. You now find yourself u. a. in the computer and technology museum in Halle .

Another part from the Aachen inventory was stored by a forwarding company in Cologne . The CHM assumed the costs for this until 2007/2008. Afterwards, individual artifacts were rescued by collectors, the rest was scrapped.

Following the closure of the end of 2009 the remaining exhibits at RWTH-site were stored and 2,012 distributed to museums, especially at the Konrad-Zuse-Computer Museum in Hoyerswerda and the Zuseum in Bautzen . The latter was also given to the Z22. Nevertheless, according to the latest findings, some of the earlier exhibits were shredded.

Web links

• Entry on the pages of university collections in Germany
• Brief description and pictures on the website of the RWTH Aachen University Archives
• Report of CMA device recovery 2012 on robotrontechnik.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Aachen History Association: Where is the Aachen Computer Museum? .
2. ^ Inventory list of Aachen computers in the Computer History Museum
3. ^ Sources Schmitz / digital-ag / robotrontechnik.
4. ↑ Sad end of a museum , online article by the Aachen History Association

Coordinates: 50 ° 46 ′ 59.5 ″  N , 6 ° 2 ′ 51.9 ″  E