[SIGCIS-Members] Networking artifacts

[Michael McGovern]

Hello all,

I'm working on a computer history micro-exhibit, and we are having some
trouble picking good artifacts. Maybe some museum-minded people on this
list or collectors might be able to advise.

At this point, my team has divided our artifacts into a few sections:
memory, storage, processors, and networks. The first three are pretty much
finished or already exist but need slight tweaking. For networks, however,
I'm on our 5th or 6th big re-concepting and keep running into the same
problem: a lack of good objects to tell a story.

The idea is to explain the basic structure of the internet and how
computers sending information differs from a phone connection. However,
while most of the other sections show change over time through objects (ex.
the processors section shows an IBM 704 tube rack, IBM Standard Modular
System chips, a TI integrated circuit, and an Intel 486 processor),
networking artifacts don't furnish much physical proof for a basic concept
in the same way.

We currently have some old modems and have decided that those are pretty
uninteresting. The artifact we are happy about is an IBM network
controller. We have thrown around ideas like showing different kinds of
cables but it felt too much like a hardware store display.

If anyone has worked on something similar, or has seen something
inspirational (the Science Museum's awesome Information Age exhibit comes
to mind), I would appreciate some guidance!

Sincerely,
Mikey McGovern <https://cambridge.academia.edu/MikeyMcGovern>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/attachments/20150812/0a49eaac/attachment.htm>