Hi Mike, Exhibiting something as non-physical as networking is tough but doable. I wrote a paper on the topic, based on my experiences putting together the first major exhibits on the history of the online world as part of our permanent exhibition “Revolution: The First 2000 Years of Computing.” The exhibition which is 25,000 square feet at the Computer History Museum is also online, and you might find it helpful to look at the Networking gallery <http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/networking/19>, Web gallery <http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/the-web/20> and Mobile <http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/mobile-computing/18> (which covers some wireless networking) gallery; the contents page for the whole exhibition is at: http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/topics I presented the paper at the London Science Museum a couple of years ago, it’s here on the Springer site: http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-41650-7_1 <http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-41650-7_1>. There’s also a related blog on our site <http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/exhibiting-the-online-world/>. Best, Marc Marc Weber <http://www.computerhistory.org/staff/Marc,Weber/> | marc@webhistory.org | +1 415 282 6868 Internet History Program Founder and Curator, Computer History Museum 1401 N Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View CA 94043 computerhistory.org/nethistory <http://computerhistory.org/nethistory> Co-founder, Web History Center and Project, webhistory.org
On Aug 12, 2015, at 16:21, Michael McGovern <mcgovern.mikey@gmail.com> wrote:
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>
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Marc Weber <http://www.computerhistory.org/staff/Marc,Weber/> | marc@webhistory.org | +1 415 282 6868 Internet History Program Founder and Curator, Computer History Museum 1401 N Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View CA 94043 computerhistory.org/nethistory <http://computerhistory.org/nethistory> Co-founder, Web History Center and Project, webhistory.org