Tiia Naskali
email: tiia.naskali@utu.fi

Jaakko Suominen
email: jaakko.suominen@utu.fi

Petri Saarikoski
email: petri.saarikoski@utu.fi

The Introduction of Computer and Video Games in Museums -Experiences and Possibilities

Keywords: Digital games, museums, exhibitions

Computers and other digital devices have been used for gaming since the 1940s. However, the growth in popularity of commercial videogames has only recently been witnessed in museums. This paper creates an overview of how digital gaming devices have been introduced in museum exhibitions over the last fifteen years. The following discussion will give examples of exhibitions from different countries and provide answers to the following questions: Can digital games and gaming devices be used as promotional gimmicks for attracting new audiences to museums? How can mainframe computers be taken into account in digital game related exhibitions? How has the difference between cultural-historical and art museum contexts affected the methods for introducing digital games? Is there still room for general exhibitions of digital games or should one focus more on special theme exhibitions? How are museum professionals, researchers and computer hobbyists able to collaborate in exhibition projects?

Introduction -Pulling in with Digital Games

The popularity of digital games has increased during the last few decades. The playing of games plays an important role in many people's lives, and the average age of players is, in many countries, almost 40 years-old. In Finland, for example, the average age of the digital game player was 37 years-old in 2011, while a total of 73 % of Finns played digital games. Further, a total of 54% of the Finnish population reported playing digital games at least once a month (48% of females and 60% of males) [START_REF] Karvinen | Pelaajabarometri 2011: Pelaamisen muutos. Informaatiotutkimuksen ja Interaktiivisen median laitos/yksikkö -TRIM : Research Reports 6[END_REF].

Players' earlier experiences in gaming affect the way in which they choose the games that they play, as well as how they experience these games. The playing of games has become a part of players' life histories. Games are linked to changes in players' social relationships, as well as the uses of media and technologies, and their consumption of forms of popular culture. Thus, digital games work as mediators between many different and important sectors of contemporary cultures. Little by little, people are becoming more and more aware of these connections.

When people recollect their game histories and articulate these recollections, they often express feelings that can be interpreted in the context of nostalgia. At least in certain cases, they long for older games or situations related to the playing of games [START_REF] Suominen | The Past as the Future[END_REF]). Even though this nostalgic interpretation and explanation might be quite obvious and even self-evident, it nonetheless provides possibilities, not only for introducing retro or game and historical related consumer products to the market, but also possibly to museums. One way to take advantage of these sentiments is to create types of exhibitions that deal with questions of digital games, such as computer and video games, and consider different gamer generations as target audiences, which would like to replay and re-experience classic games, potentially introduce those games to their children, or without earlier experiences, get to know the history of a phenomenon that is important in their current lives.

A possible starting point for the creation of such an exhibition is the notion that game-related (positive) feelings are often collective, social and personal, as well as being individual at the same time (Suominen 2011a. and also Suominen & Ala-Luopa 2012.). Many players and non-players recognize some game cultural icons such as Pac-Man, Super Mario and other game characters or individual game products. Likewise, they also recognize gaming platforms and technologies such as the Commodore 64 and Sinclair Spectrum home computers, coin-fed machines and home consoles. They might place these gaming icons into a section of a particular era and way of life, and then associate them with a certain phase of their own lives. At the same time, the experiences with an iconic digital character or other forms of game cultures are very personal because people situate the experiences with some particular moments and memories of their own lives. The sociologist Fred Davis (1979, 122-123) has thus divided nostalgia into collective and private.

Even though the collective importance of digital games and their history has emerged somewhere from "the below", from everyday experiences and digital game hobbyists' interest, there is a growing tendency towards institutionalizing their importance. One reason for this is the fact that gamer generations are employed in the workforce and in such positions, they are able to institutionalize something that is important for them. Games and their historical value have indeed been noticed on an institutional level. This can be seen in a growing number of game exhibitions and an interest in games. (Barwick, Dearnley & Muir 2011, 378-380;Saarikoski 2010, 132) Because of popularity, nostalgia and the fact that researchers and heritage institutions have gradually started to take notice games as a part of cultural heritage, it is tempting to use them in exhibition attractions and at least drawing cards, as a means for attracting new visitors to the museums. Even though since the late 1990s some specialised game museums have been established (such as in Berlin, 1997), digital games have more commonly been presented in temporary and, in some cases, traveling exhibitions.

The aim of this paper is to provide an idea about the variety of possibilities for exhibiting digital games in museums. We cannot comprehensively cover every museum exhibition in the world that is related to digital games, but we will nonetheless present examples from different countries and different types of museums. In addition to the review of past exhibitions, we introduce some possibilities for future exhibitions and briefly consider the question of collaboration between different actors for creating better game exhibition experiences. Digital games can be related to different kinds of contexts because of their above mentioned versatility. Games are audio-visual products that include music and other sounds, moving images and graphic design, different kinds of narrative and game genres, as well as various user interfaces and national specialities. Games are also closely attached to the hardware they are made for, which distinguish them from movies and many other audio-visual products, which can be copied and played more easily with different platforms. These tangible and intangible features provide multipleand multimodalways for examining games and relating them to different kinds of exhibitions and museums. Games are easy to relate to art, movies, design, and technology and game development. Additionally, they are part of youth culture, popular culture and different kinds of subcultures. (Barwick, Dearnley & Muir 2011, 378-384.) Because of their versatility, it's important to contextualize and present them properly, because otherwise, exhibitions can merely feel like an arcadeboth in the meaning of a game centre and their shopping mall-like setting.

Game exhibitions from around the world have attracted many players to see and play games in museums (Suominen 2011b). Interactivity, participation, the possibility to handle objects and play games interests many visitors. It has often been noted that audiences want to do something other than just looking at and reading about things (Taivassalo & Levä 2012, 8 ;Taivassalo 2003, 9-11). In this sense, games are not used as the subjects of exhibitions, but they have in some cases, played an instrumental pedagogical role in museums. Games are hard to explain without the personal experience of playing, and this is the reason why game exhibitions usually provide the possibility to play games with an emulator or with another platform. In some cases, there are also possibilities for playing games on their original digital platforms, which makes the experience more real. (Saarikoski 2010.) However, James Newman (2012) has recently contested this argument and noted that the playing experience, quite obviously, always differs from the originaleven if there has been any sort of original playing experience, because games have originally been released for many different platforms and they have been played with various user interfaces e.g. VDUs and so forth.

Despite the fact that a majority of the population plays games, these game and technology related exhibitions have attracted young people, particularly male-visitors, who usually don't visit museums very often. This target group is noticed in museums that design game exhibitions, which has been one of the goals for many exhibitions, for example at Game On and the Pelaa!game and art exhibition. (Saarikoski 2010, 136) Further, exhibitions about the Commodore 64, READY -Commodoren kultaaika (2006) at the Rupriikki Media Museum, attracted first-time visitors to the museum, and in all likelihood, this example is not unique (Naskali 2012, 73, 89). It is for these reasons that games can be used as promotional or pull in products for attracting new audiences, particularly male-visitors.

Nevertheless, digital gaming and digital technologies have their own unique cultural history while at the same time, the cultural heritage of digital technology is constantly emerging [START_REF] Suominen | Gaming Legacy? Four Approaches to the Relation between Cultural Heritage and Digital Technology[END_REF]. Games themselves are important and that is why games should not be used only as promotional gimmicks. We claim that it is controversial to only use games as tools for attracting visitors to museums, because, then, the original idea of the exhibition can be neglected and be easily ignored. Even though the above mentioned key figures of the history of modern digital games, such as Spacewar!, have already been recognized in museums, there are some more or less blind spots in the history of digital games that museum curators would be able to deal with in new exhibitions. For example, exhibitions could also display early experiences with several games and simulations such as chess, military strategy games, flight simulators or business simulators; and would be able to introduce these in various contexts, not only in relation to the history of gaming, but also in relation to business, transport and military history (on examples of these games in Finnish context, see [START_REF] Saarikoski | Pelinautintoja, ohjelmointiharrastusta ja liiketoimintaa -Tietokoneharrastuksen ja peliteollisuuden suhde Suomessa toisen maailmansodan jälkeen[END_REF].

Another noteworthy issue is the mainly forgotten double meaning of early computer games. For example, games such as NIM and its variants were used, on one hand, as experiments in the development of computer logics.

Different Museums, Different Contexts

The museum as an exhibition site makes the subject of the exhibition and displayed objects that are more significant and valuable, essentially because of the institution's primary function to preserve cultural heritage. 1 A digital game exhibition in a museum increases the appreciation and knowledge about games, gaming platforms and their meanings to our culture and society. However, there are obvious differences between museum contexts. An art museum, for example, offers an alternative way to introduce digital games in comparison to the cultural-historical context. Art as a point of view gives the exhibition design various opportunities to approach games and place the objects (and other exhibition material) (Turpeinen 2005, 147-148; Naskali 2012). Because of their artistic features, games can inspire patrons to pay more attention to the visual appearance of the exhibition. Digital games, with their audio visual qualities and gameplay remind the visitor, in many ways, of more contemporary and media art because of the soundtracks, music, graphics and lights of the moving image. This can also affect the way in which they are presented in the museum environment. Games can be seen, for example, as artworks but such an approach requires that the exhibition design and object placement needs to support this. It would also be interesting to display the original game and the art piece influenced by the game alongside one another [START_REF] Naskali | Digitaaliset pelit museossakokemuksia ja havaintoja näyttelyjen suunnittelusta ja toteutuksesta[END_REF].

It is perhaps more straightforward to try alternative presentations in art museums, because of their visual and aesthetic function, and due to the fact that the audience is also used to seeing experimental pieces of art and presentations when they go there. For example, texts don't have to always be on the wall, like in a small Pac-Man -2 This exhibition is produced by The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), which has started to collect games for their collection. http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2012/11/29 /video-games-14-in-the-collection-for-starters/ exhibition in Pori Art Museum (Finland 2011) where the text was printed in the cube 3 . This idea got its inspiration from an art exhibition design and the art museum that provided the environment without walls. Otherwise, in this case, the exhibition approach was mainly cultural-historical. Games could also elicit questions from the audience, for example about the artistic qualities of digital games, instead of placing information, that they have already interpreted, onto the wall (Turpeinen 2005, 189-191; Naskali 2012, 85). The museum is able to provide frames for the temporary exhibition approach and display, but this can also be simply background information. That means that in the exhibition displays in art museums or cultural historical museums, the approaches do not have to be, and do not have to automatically be the same. Nevertheless, the museum type can still inspire the exhibition design on a new level and bring something new to the way of introducing games.

From Generalism to Specialization

Although there is no established tradition for designing game exhibitions, partly because of their novelty in a museum environment, there are some features that seem to be part of many game exhibitions. According to Petri Saarikoski, who has participated in several game exhibition projects, like the Pelaa! -exhibition in Finland, these exhibitions usually consist of old and new games, part of which are set aside in vitrines and part of which are still playable. In addition, there are different kinds of by-products, like magazines, controllers and toys. There can also be a screen display on the wall that presents game aesthetics, gameplay, designer interviews, or a space where visitors can listen to game music or see documentations about games. The approach usually provides information about the history of games, game cultures and their meanings (from a wider or more detailed perspective, and the texts are thus placed on the walls). An exhibition usually provides lectures for the audience and game demonstrations. (Saarikoski 2010, 134) Even if there is nothing wrong with this type of display, it can be considered as "already seen", if there are only small variations. It is challenging to design exhibitions on the history of games for different kinds of audiences and make the subject understandable and interesting. It is problematic, in many situations, to ignore the changes in the digital gaming and cultural and historical contexts, but it is further troublesome if these changes are presented mechanically and chronologically. General exhibitions are able to offer a great overview of games and game cultures and related phenomena, but they can also be too generic. (Saarikoski 2010, 137) Whereas special theme exhibitions, like for example the Game Masters exhibition in ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image) and Te Papa (New Zealand's national museum), which is about the most influential game designers, can provide more details and a more inclusive experience to the audience than a general exhibition that provides, in the worst-case scenario, only a little information about this and that.

Special themes in exhibition design can inspire people to find and provide new approaches to the subject, such as interactivity in subcultures, like demoscene 4 and retrogaming 5 , different types of combinations of art and games (as we mentioned in 4 A demo is a short, most often non-interactive program that displays audio-visual content in real-time. Demoscene or the scene is a worldwide community of hobbyist interested in computer demos (Reunanen 2010,1).

5

Retro gaming is very popular at the present. "Retrogamers" or hobbyists respect old game cultures and collect and play them with the original hardware, if possible, or with new hardware via emulators. Retrogaming, as a phenomenon, tells about how older game cultures have become part of today's game culture. It can be seen, for example, in remix versions of old game music and sounds, using old game aesthetics in different kind of products like toys and clothes, and in different phenomena. The phenomenon can inspire people to find interesting games, platforms, controllers and other material for the exhibition the previously section), platform "wars" and user group rivalries, a comprehensive review of particular games or platforms or so forth. The history of games can be explored, for example, from art history, the software and hardware industry, technology, social history, knowledge and the historiography of games' point of view (Mäyrä 2008, 30-32). Although the possibility to play games is significant (in game exhibitions), because the audience can re-memorize and experience these games and have social interaction with other visitors and their experience (Saarikoski 2010, 136-137). Sociability is perhaps a more important point of view than some sort of nostalgic return to some type of authentic and original gaming experience.

It appears that the interest in general exhibitions has already started to decrease and more original and special theme exhibitions have become popular, particularly if we look at the game exhibitions that have been displayed lately. Many people have already seen the general version since game exhibitions have been increasingly displayed worldwide from the beginning of the 21 st century. At the same time, people who design these exhibitions, are getting more experience and new ideas about how to display games. This will probably influence future game exhibition design approaches and the objects that they display. For example, at some point, it appears that the dominance of video games and games cultures of the 1970s, 1980s and the early 1990s is decreasing in exhibitions, while newer games and game cultures begin to interest the public more, in the process where retrogaming and nostalgic focus transfers on new devices, applications and phenomena. In addition, exhibition related happenings and events will probably become diverse and more interactive (Saarikoski 2010, 136-137;Naskali 2012, 87), They can consist of game design workshops, eSport events, artistic performances, game music concerts and workshops, as well as collector's markets etc.

Possibilities for Collaboration

It would be ideal if museum professionals, researchers and computer hobbyist and professionals would be able to collaborate in game exhibition projects. In many projects, like Game On and all exhibition projects in Finland, this have already been accomplished. This type of collaboration has many benefits. It brings about better exhibitions, increases value and information about collections, helps to maintain museum objects, produces wider historical awareness amongst computer professionals, hobbyists, users and so forth.

A simple museum object, without text, does not communicate with the general audience very well, except with professionals (cf. Hällström 2011, 82-83). An object requires interpretation that makes it part of the collection or exhibition theme (Heinonen & Lahti 2001, 152-153). Museum professionals have specialised knowledge about different audiences, museum environments and techniques, and they know how to execute functional and impressive exhibitions. They also have experience with preserving different kinds of objects (even if they are not necessary design and approaches to the subject. Together with the fact that gaming has become part of our everyday life, retro gaming cultures provides one possible frame for exhibition design that operates with time [START_REF] Suominen | The Past as the Future[END_REF][START_REF] Saarikoski | Peleistä taiteeksi: digitaaliset pelit taidemuseossa -Salon taidemuseon Pelaa! -näyttely 2009[END_REF]). that familiar with preserving digital content such as games). Researchers can bring along their knowledge on the history of games, different kinds of game cultures and digital cultures to the game exhibition creation process. Together with museum professionals, they are able to make the exhibition narrative, select topics and produce content for different audiences. That turns the exhibition into more than just a general display with a gaming room. That is what makes the exhibition relevant. Hobbyists and game collectors are, in many ways, important partners in exhibition projects. In Finland for instance, they are the only ones who have, to date, preserved old games, gaming devices and other related objects. The most important group of hobbyists in Finland is Pelikonepeijoonit (The Arctic Computer and Console Museum), which serves game software and keeps games functional (Barwick, Dearnley, & Muir 2011, 375-376). They are enthusiastic, not only about the subject, but also about their memories, feelings and personal aspects, which can also be used in exhibition design, in addition to the collective perspective. That can make the subject more approachable (Newman & Simmons 2009, 1-6). Hobbyists are also able to organize various workshops and game demonstrations.

In addition, it would be important to collaborate more with game companies in exhibition projects, partly because of the legal issues present in many countries. Further, many old games are impossible to play nowadays. Emulation of the original hardware requires permission from the hardware manufacturer and transferring the game to different media platforms requires the approval of all rights-holders involved in the game. Another solution is to adapt copyright laws in order to make video game preservation easier (Guttenbrunner, Becker & Rauber 2010, 75; Naskali 2012, 83).

Conclusion

In this paper, we have provided an overview of some aspects of exhibiting digital games in museums. We have argued that due to games' general increased importance, they have to be taken into account more carefully in museums as well. Even though there has been a plethora of game exhibition projects, particularly over the last 15 years, the tendency in the future is to put more emphasis on permanent collections, as well as special thematic exhibitions instead of general overviews of digital games cultures.

One has to obviously, always consider several key aspects: what is the museum context for the exhibition (what type of museum: cultural historical museum, art museum, museum of science and technology, museum of communication, games, computers etc.), what is the role of game in its in entirety (main topic, supporting role, or an instrumental role in introducing something else), what is the context of the introduction of games (popular cultural, artistic, everyday life, certain era, military, technological, design, innovation process etc.), how to use freshly multimodal and interactive affordances of games, and naturally, ponder the question, who is the audience?

In this paper, we have also argued that the collaboration between museum professionals, academic researchers and computer professionals and hobbyists is one of the most important key factors for creating the best possible way for making an exhibit of digital games.

Fig. 1 :Fig. 2 :

 12 Fig. 1: Examples of two different museum exhibitions of games: one from the Berlin computer game museum in 2012. Photo: Tiia Naskali

Fig. 3 :

 3 Fig. 3: A photo from the Game On! exhibition in 2003. Photo: Petri Saarikoski

Fig. 4 :

 4 Fig. 4: Picture from a PDP-1 computer at the Game On! exhibition at the Helsinki City Art Museum 18.9.-14.12.2003. Photo: Petri Saarikoski.Different purposes and attitudes towards computer games reveal social and cultural meanings that computers and gaming have had and still have nowadays. Digital games have been part of computers from the very beginning and they were first made for testing a computer's capacity and training people to use them. Therefore, 50 years ago digital games had, at least on some level, more serious meanings and serves the same purposes that they have now(Saarikoski & Suominen 2009, 18-19; Mäyrä 2008, 52-53).Even though the above mentioned key figures of the history of modern digital games, such as Spacewar!, have already been recognized in museums, there are some more or less blind spots in the history of digital games that museum curators would be able to deal with in new exhibitions. For example, exhibitions could also display early experiences with several games and simulations such as chess, military strategy games, flight simulators or business simulators; and would be able to introduce these in various contexts, not only in relation to the history of gaming, but also in relation to business, transport and military history (on examples of these games in Finnish context, see[START_REF] Saarikoski | Pelinautintoja, ohjelmointiharrastusta ja liiketoimintaa -Tietokoneharrastuksen ja peliteollisuuden suhde Suomessa toisen maailmansodan jälkeen[END_REF].Another noteworthy issue is the mainly forgotten double meaning of early computer games. For example, games such as NIM and its variants were used, on one hand, as experiments in the development of computer logics. On the other hand, the games introduced the vast potential of computers and popularized computing technology for public audiences in newspaper and magazine articles and public exhibitions in the 1950s and the 1960s[START_REF] Paju | Wider Screen 2003/2-3 Digitaaliset pelit ja elokuva[END_REF][START_REF] Jorgensen | Context and Driving Forces in the Development of the Early Computer Game Nimbi[END_REF]. Picture of the Nimrod machine for playing of NIM in the early 1950s, see: http://en.wikipedia.org

  On the other hand, the games introduced the vast potential of computers and popularized computing technology for public audiences in newspaper and magazine articles and public exhibitions in the 1950s and the 1960s (Paju 2003; Jorgensen 2009. Picture of the Nimrod machine for playing of NIM in the early 1950s, see: http://en.wikipedia.org

Fig. 5 :Fig. 6 :Fig. 7 :

 567 Fig. 5: Three different examples of games in art context: one from Ljubljana in 2009. Photo: Jaakko Suominen

Fig. 8 :

 8 Fig. 8: The Pac-Man cube in Pori Art Museum. Photo: Janne Karvinen A game exhibition that introduces the subject from a cultural-historical point of view usually provides a history of platforms, games and gaming with their broader meanings and related phenomena. Exhibitions are usually about one or a few platforms and/or games, or it can provide a larger holistic story about digital games. (Saarikoski 2010, 134-136). It is very common, however, to combine both art and cultural historical approaches in game exhibitions like in the following exhibitions: Computer Games -The evolution of a medium in Computerspiele Museum (Germany, 2011-), Game On (traveling exhibition from 2002-, also Game On 2.0 from 2010-), Game Story -A History of Video Games (France 2011-2012), and the smaller and first of this kind of exhibition in Finland, Pelaa!game and art exhibition (Finland, 2009-2010).The museum is able to provide frames for the temporary exhibition approach and display, but this can also be simply background information. That means that in the exhibition displays in art museums or cultural historical museums, the approaches do

Fig. 9 :

 9 Fig. 9: A Pac-Man in Flesh game performance in Pori Art Museum. Photo: Petri Saarikoski

Fig. 10 :

 10 Fig. 10: An example of a national exhibition of games and game industry: Finnish games then and now, Tampere 2012. Photo: Taru Muhonen

Fig. 11 :

 11 Fig. 11: A group of organizers of Pelaa! exhibition: Mikko Heinonen from Pelikonepeijoonit (The Arctic Computer and Console Museum), Leena Järvelä from Salo cultural museum, Juha Köönikkä, Petri Saarikoski and Jaakko Suominen from the University of Turku. Photo: Marjatta Hietanen

2 The Variety of Game Exhibitions Digital

  games have been exhibited in various types of museums, such as in cultural historical museums, art museums and galleries, museums of photography and moving image, and museums of media and communication. (See the table 1)

Table 1 :

 1 Some examples of game exhibitions from the 1990s to the present

				Permanent/
				Temporary/
	Exhibition	Time	Museum	Traveling	Approach
	Videotopia	1996-2011	traveling exhibition (worldwide)	traveling	art/ science/ cultural history
	Game On	2002-	traveling exhibition (worldwide)	traveling	cultural history/ art
					one company/
	Level X	4.12.2003-8.2.2004	Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo, Japan	temporary	art/ cultural history, focused on the history of Nintendo Famicom
					console
			Gallery
	I am 8-bit	18.4.-19.5.2005	Nineteen Los Angeles, Eighty Eight,	temporary	art
			United States
	C:/DOS/RUN -Remembering the 80s Computer	25.8.-9.10.2005	The Film Zealand Archive, Wellington, New	temporary	art
	READY -
	Commodoren kulta-aika [The Golden Age of	9.3.-28.5.2006	Rupriikki Media Museum, Tampere, Finland	temporary	cultural history/ one platform
	Commodore]
	Mikrokerhoista
	koteihin.
	Satakuntalaisen tietokoneharrastami sen juurilla [From	27.9.-12.11.2006	Satakunta Finland Museum, Pori,	temporary	cultural history
	Computer Clubs to
	Homes]

ICOMs Museum definition: http://icom.museum/the-vision/museum-definition/.

The audience was free to take the cube in their hands and to read the text in any order that they wanted. It also made it easier to notice all kinds of audiences because the cube was light and movable and it could be red from the distance that felt comfortable[START_REF] Naskali | Digitaaliset pelit museossakokemuksia ja havaintoja näyttelyjen suunnittelusta ja toteutuksesta[END_REF]).

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Kone Foundation for funding the Kotitietokoneiden aika ja teknologisen harrastuskulttuurin perintö (The Era of Home Computers and the Heritage of Technological Hobbyist Culture) research project.

Exhibitions

10. Pac-Man -vanhempi kuin Porin taidemuseo [Pac-Man -Older than Pori Art Mu-seum]: http://www.doria.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/86817/gradu2012naskali.pdf?sequence=1. Accessed 16 July 2013. 11. Pelaa! [Play!]game and art exhibition: http://www.pelitutkimus.fi/vuosikirja2010/ptvk2010-12.pdf. Accessed 16 July 2013. 12. Pongista Pleikkaan [From Pong to PlayStation]: http://www.elektra.fi/pages/pp.html, http://www.tekniikanmuseo.fi/pongistapleikkaan.html. Accessed 16 July 2013. 13. Spacewar! Video Game Blast Off: http://www.movingimage.us/exhibitions/2012/12/15/detail/spacewar-video-games-blastoff/. Accessed 16 July 2013. 14. READY -Commodoren kulta-aika [The Golden Age of Commodore]: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.119949721351056.19487.119920721353956&t ype=3. Accessed 16 July 2013. 15. Serious Games: http://www.berylgraham.com/serious/. Accessed 16 July 2013. 16. Videogame Nation: http://www.videogamenation.net/Home.html. Accessed 16 July 2013. 17. Videotopia: http://www.videotopia.com/. Accessed 16 July 2013. 18. WoW: Emergent Media Phenomenon: http://lagunaartmuseum.org/wow-emergent-mediaphenomenon/. Accessed 16 July 2013.


Charles H Lindsey
email: chl@clerew.man.ac.uk

Museums -What They Can and Should be Doing

Keywords: Museums, purpose, history, mindsets

Museums have a duty, not only to preserve the Objects in their care, but also to preserve the skills and the mindsets of those who created them; furthermore, those concepts must somehow be conveyed to the visiting public. I shall give examples of how this can be achieved when illustrating how the early computers paved the way for the ubiquitous devices that we know today. These will include interactive gadgets to show the underlying principles, and videos of the objects in use.

I suggest there are four main objectives:

1. To inform and educate the visiting Public as to the nature and significance of the Objects on display. 2. To enable serious researchers, perhaps far in the future, to examine the Objects in order to discover their precise nature, history, capabilities and manner of use. No great disagreement about those two, I would imagine.

3. To preserve the skills necessary for the maintenance and operation of the Objects. That one is not so obvious. Some Museums do it well. For example, the skills of operating cotton machinery are well preserved at MOSI1 , Styal Mill2 and, most effectively, at Helmshore3 . When it comes to computing, little happens except when pressurized by the CCS4 . MOSI has the reconstructed "Baby" (a replica of the world's first stored-program computer) which is preserving the art of working with thermionic valvesand just in time given that the people with the necessary skills are dying off at an unseemly rate. Sometimes the pioneers have all died off, and then the skills have to be rediscovered by Trial and Error, as I am discovering myself with Hartree's Differential Analyser (where many times the Trial has indeed turned out to be an Error).

TNMOC5 is the shining example, expressly created for this purpose, but the Science Museum6 has an ambivalent approach. It has the working Pegasus (as a result of CCS pressure, but beset with Health and Safety issues). Many years ago, it obtained a large piece of Hartree's Differential Analyser restored to (allegedly) working order, but after around 12 months it lost interest and it has lain idle ever since. It constructed a replica of Babbage's (never built) 2 nd difference engine, and every day someone would come and crank the handle and show it in operation. Nowadays, that handle is only cranked when somebody especially requests it. 4. To preserve the "mindset" or "world-view" of the people who made the Objects.

And that one, I suspect, goes largely unrecognised, but it is the one I want to explore in this paper. It concerns what they thought they were trying to achieve. It concerns their view of the tools available for the purpose. It concerns the methods they used for going about their taskthe problems they considered it important to address. Now this "mindset" is what I want to convey to the Public. I do not expect the Public to be especially interested in the skills as such, though they may well appreciate seeing the results of exercising them. And note also that the "mindset" is a function of time, so it will have varied throughout History.

Historical Perspectives

When Did History Start?

Well the Romans had the abacus (a digital device) and they weighed things by sliding weights on a long lever (an analogue device). But it was in the 19 th Century when things really got going, with Babbage's illfated projects, and with the need for astronomical tables as the driving force. At the start of the 20 th Century we had punched cards and mechanical calculators, such as the Brunsviga. Then came wheel-and-disc integrators, much used during the war for bomb sights and anti-aircraft control; and finally electronic devices and, above all, the Von Neumann model of the stored program computer.

When Should History End?

Initially, applications were purely arithmetical, whether for scientific or commercial purposes. Artificial intelligence was just a twinkle in the eye of Alan Turing and language translation in the eye of Andrew Booth; and that was it. Computers were large and bulky; you could look inside them and see how they were constructed, and 254 they had lots of flashing lights and knobs to twiddle (a cartoonist's dream!) so you could see and control what was happening.

And then, around 1980, two fundamental changes occurred (not entirely unrelated). The first was the Integrated Circuita computer on a chip. Now you cannot see what is inside. IC design is an esoteric art practised by Intel, ARM and a few others. I cannot foresee how, in 200 years' time, anyone will have preserved, or even be able to rediscover, that art. ICs are just not museum-friendlyright at the end of the gallery you may see a computer chip opened up, with a large magnifying glass (or even a microscope) in front of it, and that is about as much as you can do.

The second change was the WIMP interface, coupled with the ability to manipulate images and sounds and to transmit them over the internet. Computers are now mostly about Communication, and Communications are mostly performed by Computers. Alan Turing has met Claude Shannon, and you can hardly tell the difference between them.

Museums are meant to record history, but things are now changing so rapidly that they cannot possibly keep up. So I therefore propose that we should regard Computer History, and the involvement of Museums with it, as having ended when these changes arrived. Someday, when the dust has settled and the perspectives have become clearer, that situation can be reviewed. But it won't be regarded as "Computer" History anymore, even though it is clear that whatever it is would never have come about if real computers hadn't happened first.

Why we Need Working Machines

There is a well-known saying: A Picture is worth a thousand Words. I would add two corollaries to this:

1. A Live Demonstration is worth a thousand Pictures 2. Hands-on experience is worth a thousand Live Demonstrations Clearly, a working machine fulfils our aim to preserve those skills. But even working machines cannot be demonstrated continuously, so their interpretation is still important. We can distinguish several situations:

Purely Static Objects

Early manufacturers took great pride in enclosing their computers in shiny cabinets so you could not see what was inside. So at least the doors should be left open, or the covers left off, if there is something to be seen within. If it is a chain printer, then you need to be able to see the chain. If it is a hard disc, then it needs to be sectioned so you can see how the heads moved. Indeed, for any Object in a Museum, there should be sufficient information provided to show the visitor, at least roughly, how it worked. These Objects may have worked once, but restoration is impractical, or impossibly expensive; but still they have a story to tell.

Once-in-a-Blue-Moon Objects

These are usually made of shining brass and are kept in glass cabinets where they cannot be sullied by dirty fingers. But this hardly helps the public to appreciate their significance. So, once every 50 years at least, they should be taken out and turned over by hand to show how they did whatever they were intended to do. And then you make a video of the operation, which can be seen on demand by the visiting Public and even sold for profit in the Museum shop. There are lots of Objects this could be done to, but I have my eye focussed on two of them in the Science Museum: 1. The piece of Babbage's Difference Engine.

Replicas

Where the original machine no longer exists, but where its historical significance is sufficiently great, building a replica can be justified, though I am far from convinced this is so for machines which never existed physically (unless there is serious doubt as to whether they would actually have worked). The great advantage of a replica is that it is not an original to be preserved at all costs, and so you can experiment with it; moreover it still fulfils the objective of preserving the skills needed for its construction and use.

Restoring Original Machines

Museum curators can get somewhat paranoid about the destruction of valuable historical evidence, which is an inevitable accompaniment to restoration. For Hartree's differential analyser, we are keeping careful records of what we have done, and any part that is re-manufactured or otherwise not part of the original is painted blue. But where the Museum is prepared to allow it (and the simplest way to ensure that is for the donor to make it a condition) it has great advantages; for sure the skills are preserved, and the Public can see it in operation. But a word of warning here; the Public needs to see something worthwhile, to learn something new, to be impressed; a black box that simply dishes out correct results will not do. Ideally, the machine needs to be seen solving real (but perhaps small) problems of the type it was intended for. And don't forget to video the presentation for when demonstrations are not actually in progress.

And another word of warning: make sure that plans are in place to ensure demonstrations will continue for whatever is the expected lifetime of the restoration. Museums can be exceedingly fickle; priorities and visions of their "Grand Objective" can change as fast as new Directors get appointed. So each project must have a "Champion", and a fairly ruthless one at that. Fortunately, the CSS is well placed to provide and support such Champions, and to ensure their succession as time takes its toll.

Emulation

Is this not an alternative to restoration? To some extent Yes; it preserves some (but not all) of the skills, it is much cheaper, and people can download the emulation and play with it at home. But it is best regarded as an adjunct to rather than a substitute for the real thing.

Mindsets

These change over timeeven within the period from c.1950 to c.1980 upon which we are concentrating. They concern the issues which the computer designers of that time had to contend with, the choices they had to make, the technologies available to them, the methodologies that they used. We need to give the Public some feel for them, because they see present day computers as communication and image manipulation/display gadgets with jazzy interfaces for which our issues do not seem immediately relevant. Evidently, within our time-frame, computing was much more related to Mathematics, and giving the Public some feel for Mathematics is, in this age, an important objective in itself.

So what are the tools available to us? Good written material (and handouts) associated with the Objects, demonstrations of working exhibits, videos (which can go beyond simple images of the demonstrationsanimation can be used to explain the underlying principles), hands-on contact with small actual objects; but, above all, interactive gadgets to illustrate the principles concerned (though they have to be of robust construction so as to be small-child-proof). So here are some examples, and some suggestions as to how to put these ideas across.

Analog vs. Digital

Analog computing has been going in and out of fashion for many centuries, and I don't think we have seen the last of it yet. Slide rules are the best tool to get the basic idea across; they were the pocket calculators of their day, every Museum will have several examples on show, and I have built a large one at MOSI for people to play with (and it aims to show how they were actually used, rather than simply demonstrating that it can multiply 2 by 3 to get 6). Another device that should be on hand (or on video) is a planimeter.

To illustrate digital, you cannot beat a simple abacus (preferably a Russian shoty with ten beads per digit, although the ones in your glass cabinet are more likely to be Chinese or Japanese). It is an excellent tool to illustrate carry propagation (now there is an issue that caused much worry for the early computer designers); and you can then move up to a Brunsviga which again illustrates carry propagation, and then you go on to use it for multiplication, explaining that the same basic process must be occurring in every pocket calculator, computer and mobile telephone. Actually, the best way to show carry propagation in action is that video of Babbage's Difference Engine that I called for earlier, and if you could manage to get the hand cranked piece of his analytical engine working, that would illustrate anticipatory carry too.

Decimal vs. Binary

That certainly needs to be explained. MOSI has a nice interactive 4-bit binary adder/subtracter that gets well used.

Serial vs. Parallel

Nobody in his right mind would make a serial computer these days, but if they had never been made and seen to work at the start, nobody would have attempted to make a parallel one. The distinction is important if you want to illustrate delay-line storage.

Logic Diagrams

A topic not part of the usual Museum fare, but it is essential to tell how everything inside a computer is built out of a small number of basic logic elementsand, or and not. What is needed is an interactive mechanical model of an adder, clearly showing the individual gates and their interconnections. Make it however you will; steel balls rolling down grooves; mechanical representations of diodes (levers A and B pushing lever C down with a spring as a pull-up resistor makes an OR-gateturn it upside down for an AND-gate). Let the kiddies set up two binary numbers, and then watch the carry propagating.

Packaging

Early computers were wired up just like wireless sets. Everything hard soldered in place, so if it broke, it took you hours to locate the fault, mend it, and get it running again. So they invented removable packages with simple gates on them. So examples of such packages should be on display (and that is why I suggested leaving the computer door open so they can be seen). If you can arrange a simple binary counter made out of packages and a scope to show it counting up, so much the better. Now, of course, components are much more reliable, so everything is again hard soldered onto a motherboard (and if that breaks, you just throw it away and get another onethat is called "progress").

Order Codes

A lot of effort was made in the early days to get these right. Writing in machine code is unfashionable these days, but people need to realise that it is still there behind the scenes, whatever programming language is used. If you are running an emulator for something with a nice simple order code (e.g. the Baby or a Pegasus, ignoring all the drum stuff), then you should provide an opportunity for people to write their own small programs. Nothing complicated: "Squares and Cubes" or "Fibonacci Numbers" are quite sufficient to get the basic idea across.

Input/Output

Nobody these days has ever seen punched paper tape, let alone a teleprinter. So it needs to be on view. At MOSI, even though our Pegasus is not working, it is planned to commission the paper tape equipment and attach it to the emulator. This will make demonstrations much more interesting, because you can see things happening, which is an essential feature of any demonstration.

The same goes for punched cards, with the addition that they were in use long before computers came on the scene. Showing a full tabulator in operation is probably too much (leave that for the videos), but if you can lay your hands on a working card sorter, then that can make a most spectacular demonstration; moreover, it is easy to explain how it works, and it is fairly easy to maintain.

Memory

There is a progression -Williams tubes, through delay lines, core stores, and up to ICsand a corresponding exponential growth in capacity. There should be exhibits to illustrate this progression. An interesting interactive would be a single core plane, with pushbuttons to select a row and column for current to flow through, a knob to determine the direction of the current (write or read), and a CRT, or at least a LED, to show whether a 1 or a 0 had been stored there.

External Storage

Tape decks should be in evidence (though having a working one might be a step too far). A drum would be fine, so long as you can see inside it. Exchangeable discs so people can gawk at how few megabytes they held, compared to their huge bulk. Floppy discs, and their drives (opened up). And of course a sectioned hard drive as already mentioned.

  "Sacrilege" I can hear the Curators saying. But I know this works, because I have done it before with the smaller piece of that machine kept in the Computer Laboratory at Cambridge; it worked just fine (no adjustments needed) and we used it to produce a small table of squares and cubes. 2. Kelvin's Harmonic Analyser. By peering closely at it, I was able to work out what it did (which is not what I had expected it to do -Kelvin had a later machine for that). But it would be fascinating to watch it (or a video of it) in action, and it would be a brilliant tool for explaining what Fourier analysis is all about.

The Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester

Quarry Bank Mill, Cheshire

Helmshore Mills Textile Museum, Lancashire

The Computer Conservation Society

The National Museum of Computing, Bletchley Park

The Science Museum, London

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to Peter Onion, who presented this paper to the Conference at excruciatingly short notice when I was unwell.

Software

This is a huge topic, and I am not sure that a Museum is the right place to exhibit it. But it does need to be preserved, and that is a whole new ballpark which I do not propose to enter here.

Videos

You will have noticed my frequent mention of these, and I am surprised that Museums do not already make greater use of them, and not just for computers. Every gallery should have one, with a well-structured menu so people can choose exactly what they would like to see. Clearly, they should illustrate the Objects on local display, but there is the opportunity to go further, showing Objects from other Museums, and exploring underlying concepts in more detail, perhaps with the aid of animations.

And Finally ...

There is a temptation for Museums to concentrate overmuch on the quality of their displays; but this can easily lead to a triumph of Form over Content. Museum Managers bear a responsibility to ensure their visitors come away knowing more than when they came in. At their best, they can provide brilliant solutions for bringing this about. But, sadly, sometimes they can also be a part of the problem.


Christopher P Burton
email: cpb@envex.demon.co.uk

The Teenage "Baby" on Show

Keywords: SSEM, Small-Scale Experimental Machine, "Baby" computer, computer replica, MOSI, Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester computers

de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

The "Baby" Replica

The original Small-Scale Experimental Machine was built in the Electro-Technics department of the University of Manchester by Williams, Kilburn and Tootill in 1947 and 1948 [START_REF] Williams | Universal high-speed digital computers: a small-scale experimental machine[END_REF]. It was a test-bed for the cathode ray tube storage system which they had been developing since before 1946 [START_REF] Williams | A storage system for use with binary-digital computing machines[END_REF]. On 21 st June 1948 it correctly ran a program to calculate the highest factor of an integer, thereby becoming the earliest storedprogram computer to work. The machine was subsequently greatly enlarged and developed so as to become the prototype of the Manchester University Mark I computer in 1949.

In late 1994 the Computer Conservation Society (CCS) instigated construction of a replica of the computer as it existed in June 1948 [START_REF] Burton | Replicating the Manchester Baby: Motives, Methods and Messages from the Past[END_REF]. The goal was to run that first program again on 21 st June 1998 to celebrate 50 years of stored-program computing. The project was sponsored by the computer systems company ICL and the assembly took place in Manchester Computing Centre in the Computer Science building at the University of Manchester. The work was done by a small team of volunteers, most of whom were members of the CCS. The workshop team in ICL's West Gorton R&D centre manufactured parts, but construction and wiring of sub-assemblies was done by volunteers in their homes. These electronic units and mechanical items were then brought to the university for assembling into the complete system.

The replica was complete and working by February 1998, whereupon it was dismantled and transported to MOSI. Here it was re-assembled and the next few months were devoted to tidying, shaking-out remaining errors and generally preparing for the anniversary celebrations. Highlight of the celebrations was running the first program again by the same men who achieved it 50 years earlier, and then the formal handing-over of the machine into the care of MOSI [4].

The museum is itself located on an historic site, with numerous large and important buildings dating from the mid-1800s and earlier. These buildings are of intrinsic interest themselves, as well as housing and displaying the museum collections. Focus is on Manchester-oriented inventions and history, so collections cover textile manufacture, steam engines, railways, city infrastructure, the factory system and so on. Very good interactive galleries for children are present, indeed there is a strong learning environment for parties from schools.

One large four-storey building is "The 1830 Warehouse", the world's first railway goods warehouse. This is largely intact from Victorian timesbrick-built, wooden floors, timber and cast iron pillars, large windows and hydraulic hoists, all still present. In 1998, the top floor was empty but planned to become the "Futures Gallery" to show communications, from writing to railways, and telegraph to television. It was felt that this would be a suitable background to display the "Baby", and plans were made to move it there.

A Luggable Computer

The original machine was experimental and most interconnecting wires between units were made to screw terminals. The replica echoes this construction so to move it conveniently it is divided into nine separate racks of equipment by disconnecting about 200 carefully labelled wires. A team of four men can then carry each rack onto appropriate transport. This requires care because the electronic components are not protected in any way and so are vulnerable to accidental damage.

Move 1 -University to Top Floor of 1830 Warehouse

The racks of the machine were moved the few miles from the university to the 1830 Warehouse on Tuesday 24 th February 1998. Two days later the machine had been connected up together again and worked after fixing a few small faults. This quick return to working order was a great tribute to the care with which the ICL operatives transported the machine.

As already mentioned, the installation was handed over to MOSI a few months later, and there it could be shown to the public in a spacious and authentic-looking setting. There was no "passing trade"museum visitors had to find out from signage and enquiry where the "Baby" was, and then make the effort to ascend to the top floor to find it. Nevertheless there was a steady stream of visitors and probably very few days with no visitors. There were sufficient volunteers available to respond to visitors on Tuesdays from 10:00 to 16:00 with a pattern of scheduled demonstrations at 12:00 and 14:00. On other days a 'visitor present' detector triggered a voice commentary with synchronised spotlights to enliven the exhibit and educate the visitor.

Computers are notoriously boring to look at unless there is something moving or animated. For "Baby" the interesting thing to watch is the monitor cathode ray tube, 6 inches diameter, showing the pattern of 0s and 1s in the store, and where the results of computations are displayed. For safety, the public is kept 2 meters away from the machine by a barrier and the monitor screen is too distant to see clearly. We therefore embedded two slave monitor screens in protected housings within the barrier for close inspection by visitors. However we eventually found that we could not maintain adequate brightness from these tubes at affordable cost, and the technique was later abandoned and a bright oscilloscope placed near the computer as a substitute

The replica remained in place for almost seven years and was demonstrated to visitors once a week. The museum plans now called for re-allocation of space on the Top Floor. So in April 2005 the machine was dismantled once again to move to a new location.

Move 2 -Top Floor to Second Floor of 1830 Warehouse

Preparations, transporting the machine and re-assembly took a few days by museum staff. Connecting and re-commissioning took a couple of weeks' part time work by volunteers, whereupon the pattern of displaying and demonstrating the "Baby" restarted. It was now somewhat easier for visitors to find the machine, and visitor numbers were increasing. A number of VIPs including the Prime Minister at the time were escorted up to see the machine in operation as it was becoming recognised as an important representative of Manchester's scientific and industrial history. The site was somewhat gloomy, although quite in keeping with the original university laboratory. However, after two years, in mid-2007, yet more upheaval was anticipated as the whole area on the second floor was earmarked for an important new gallery sponsored by British Telecom called "Connected Earth". We were on the move again. By this time MOSI had much more ambitious plans for "Baby".

Move 3 -To Ground Floor of Main Building

The Grand Plan was that the Main Building, also known as the Great Western Warehouse, another historic building on the site, was to be transformed internally. On the ground floor is the primary visitor entrance area, with substantial galleries and services on the three floors above. A major ground-to-roof reconstruction would provide a very large visitor orientation area on the ground floor and prestige galleries and conference facilities on the floors above. "Baby" would be part of this scheme. This was the plan but it was some way off for implementation, and meanwhile "Baby" would be on display on the ground floor, not far from where visitors currently arrived, and right on the route visitors took to other parts of the museum. In the public eye indeed! Once again, the machine was un-wired and disassembled, to vacate the space needed by Connected Earth. It took some time to prepare the new site in the Main Building which was a little smaller than we were used to, and care had to be taken to ensure the safety of visitors. So the machine was in limbo for a couple of months before the volunteer team could get access to re-assemble and re-wire. Once power was available on-site, it took a day to confirm the computer was in good order and ready to display and demonstrate to the public.

The new location meant that there were many more visitors looking at "Baby" even on non-demonstration days. Audio-visual aids in the barrier surrounding the machine helped tell people what they were looking at. A recruiting drive had yielded several extra volunteers able to talk about the machine and the history of the original, so there was non-stop activity all day on Tuesdays, and occasional demonstrations on other days and weekends, for example at school holiday times. Evening demonstrations for conference delegates were also very popular, sometimes accompanied by more formal lectures.

But our months in that location were numbered, as planned from the beginning. After just two years, the system had to be moved into storage so that the huge refurbishment task in the building could start. In November 2009 everything was transported to a secluded storage area further along and higher up in the building, where nominally no construction work was to take place. How little we knew!

Move 4 -Ground floor to Storage Area of Main Building

The expectation was that the "Baby" would be safe in storage together with the large quantity of spare valves (vacuum tubes) and other components and associated test equipment and documents. There was insufficient availability of power to be able to operate the whole machine for testing purposes while in storage, though there was the prospect of applying power to separate parts of the system. At some stage in early 2010, the building contractors broke through the partition barrier and stored quantities of drywall gypsum plaster-board in the area. This was not discovered for several weeks, when the volunteers were astounded to find that the place had also been used as a workshop for cutting-up the drywall, and everything was coated in a thick layer of powder. Not the most appropriate way to look after a Fig. 5 -The spacious Revolution Manchester Gallery -"Baby" in far corner (Image ©MOSI) museum object! When the builders had been ousted, the team spent several weeks during June and July with brushes and vacuum cleaner attempting to restore the situation. Repairs were made to the chassis which had been damaged and where possible a limited amount of testing carried out.

Meanwhile a splendid new spacious visitor orientation area, the 'Revolution Manchester Gallery' was being completed, and preparations made there for a site for "Baby", to be highlighted as an 'Icon of Manchester Science'. Once again the barrier separating the public from the machine would be exploited, with embedded iPads and other interactive material for use by visitors. In mid-November 2010 the racks were yet again carried to the new site, placed in position and the machine covered in dust sheets pending completion of the gallery. The machine had been out of the public's gaze for a little over a year, had endured two moves and there was evident physical damage to many of the fragile valves.

Move 5 -Storage Area to Revolution Manchester Gallery

A week before Christmas 2010 a power feed was available on the new site and the work of re-commissioning could begin. Visual checks showed that at least 50 of the little glass diodes had bent pins or cracks in the glass, not always fatal, but a cause for concern. This was due to suffering in the "builders' workshop" and insufficient recognition of the vulnerabilities by staff moving the machine. After weeding out defective diodes, and locating and repairing various broken or disconnected wires, the Fig. 6 -Visitors interested in "An Icon of Manchester Science" machine was running programs again in January 2011. The volunteers achieved this success in only eight work days, despite the intervening holiday, but assisted by the piecemeal testing that had been possible after cleaning while in storage.

In the past two years on the new site, the "Baby" has settled into a pattern of more regular attendance by volunteers able to talk about the object to the public, so that usually three days per week are staffed. The size of the volunteer team has doubled, taking a load off those volunteers who are able to repair the machine. The machine is by no means very reliableareas of concern are residual problems due to past damage to valves, severe problems due to ageing of resistors, especially in the sensitive analogue arithmetic units, and problems maintaining the CRT stores. In many cases the machine can be kept working by artifice and backup facilities, but in any case visitors seem to enjoy watching volunteer engineers, equipped with oscilloscope and test meter, attempting to fix faults.

Some Reliability Data during 15 Years on Show

The volunteer team maintains a maintenance log book to record faults, repairs and notes to communicate with other volunteers. Discipline in filling-in the log is usually quite good, but inevitably varies with individual consciences and the degree of mental concentration in different circumstances. Frequently, an adjustment of a control for example will not be recorded. Similarly, in the heat of the moment, replacement of a valve might not get recorded. Nevertheless, assuming omissions are random, and inclusions are of faults which take most time to clear, some sort of comparison of faults over time can be seen in Table 1 below. The figures belie the amount of time spent just trying to figure-out that a fault is present and what is causing it. The data includes re-commissioning after a move as well as in normal demonstrations, hence the unexpectedly high number of connection faults. Apart from the large number of valve faults in 2010 due to physical damage, it is surprising how few faults of this type have appeared over the years. The original machine was said to have required several valve replacements per week. The difference may be attributed to a couple of reasonsa) the replica is only switched on for a few hours per week and b) the valves we have used were new but old stock, probably made in the 1950s when manufacturers were forced to pay attention to reliability. The pioneers had to make do with items made in the frenzy of wartime.

Year

The Volunteer Team

For the first year of operation, the team of volunteers who had built the replica performed demonstrations and talked to the public. As the years passed so these individuals dropped-out and fresh enthusiasts joined-in, and inevitably there was change in expertise in repair skills. On the other hand newer volunteers tended to be more self-selecting to be good at interacting with visitors. Recently the classification of volunteers has been systematised to provide a "volunteer career path" and a contribution to improving Health and Safety issues [5]. Level 1 people are explainers but are not qualified to operate or even to switch-on the "Baby". Level 2 embraces Level 1 and additionally the volunteer may operate the machine to run defined programs. Level 3 qualifies to run test programs and make diagnoses, and perform fallback procedures to maximise demonstrability of the machine. Finally, Level 4 volunteers are those able to do all the previous tasks and carry out detailed diagnosis and repair of the machine. This grading scheme is in line with similar schemes being set up at the London Science Museum and at The National Museum of Computing.

The enthusiasm, skill and dedication of the team of volunteers are major factors contributing to the success of the "Baby" as a museum object. They are helped by the Museum's policy of encouraging and supporting volunteers. There is a "Friends" organisation with accommodation on site, which has been in existence for decades, and which formally represents volunteers' views. From time to time MOSI will provide a script for volunteers to use to succinctly tell the story within a visitor's span of attention. This is a good basis, but inevitably the explainer will embellish with his own thoughts, depending on the degree of knowledge or interest shown by the visitor. As one of the key volunteers tellingly said, I find the following always gets a positive reaction and immediate understanding by the public of where we have come from. We hold up a Cathode Ray Tube and say, "This was what a flash drive looked like in 1948, long before we invented USB, and it holds less than a millionth of a gigabyte!" This dependence on volunteers to bring otherwise boring hardware to life is reinforced by the following statement [6] by John Beckerson, Senior Curator at MOSI. The author is grateful to him for permission to pass on his comments. 'That's cool!' a teenage visitor remarked upon encountering parts of Baby when it was last moved across site by a sweating team of curators and volunteers.

You'd think that 1940s technology would be far from 'cool'. Yet today's teenagers and digital creatives find the Baby a fascinating example of early electronics because their lives are so deeply reliant upon electronic devices descended from its principles. The Baby has more appeal now than it had 20 years ago; because as we move to an increasingly digital world, public curiosity about the origins of that world is thriving. People far beyond the walls of academia have become familiar with illustrious names such as Turing and the Manchester Baby has put the names of Williams, Kilburn and Tootill on that list.

For the Museum, the Baby has been one of our great success stories. It is a compelling visitor attraction. When the Museum produced its newest gallery, Revolution Manchester, it was no surprise that the Baby found pride of place as one of the iconic objects in our collection. Not only does it stand as a signpost to the digital future, it also helps today's citizens understand a part of our scientific and industrial past which is just as important as the glorious steam engines which are so popular in the adjacent Power Hall.

Part of the reason the Baby is so popular is the thousands of hours of volunteer time which go into maintaining and explaining it. Thanks to the storytelling expertise of the volunteers, what might otherwise be a curious but also mysterious and incomprehensible object becomes a living tale about discovery, the men who made it happen, and the impact of their research. The huge value that our volunteers bring enables them to speak at different levels. They interpret the Baby in different ways to suit each visitor. One person might simply require a brief summary: whilst another could be an engineer desiring deep technical detail. No fixed exhibition could ever provide this level of flexibility. It is the winning combination of the machine and the men and women who run it -and tell its story every time they come on duty -that makes the Baby one of MOSI's best-loved exhibits.

Conclusions

During the fifteen years of its display in the museum, the "Baby" has endured a surprising amount of movement and disruption. This is uncommon for a large object which is complex, operational and requires dismantling and re-assembly every time it moves. Nevertheless, it is always repairable and can be brought back to life by the enthusiastic volunteers. That enthusiasm is manifest when they explain the history and functionality of the machine to visitors. In its current location as an Icon of Manchester Science, it is more popular than ever with visitors, providing an unusual and spectacular attraction. The author is grateful to curatorial staff at MOSI for help in preparation of this paper, and especially to the volunteer team who are proud to feel that is "their baby".

Fig. 1 -

 1 Fig. 1 -The 1830 Warehouse (Image ©MOSI)

Fig. 2 -

 2 Fig. 2 -"Futures Gallery" -Top Floor of 1830 Warehouse -1998 to 2005 (Image ©MOSI)

Fig 3 -

 3 Fig 3 -Second floor of the 1830 Warehouse -2005 to 2007

Fig. 4 -

 4 Fig. 4 -Ground floor of Main Building -2007 to 2009

Table 1 -

 1 Categorised definite faults 276

		Faulty valve or CRT	Connection	Other small component	Power system	Other	TOTAL
	1998	1	2	3			6
	1999	2	3	2	4	3	14
	2000	2	3	4	2	1	12
	2001	1			2		3
	2002	1	1	1	4		7
	2003	6	2	2	1	3	14
	2004	1	1	2	1	1	6
	2005	2	6	3	2	3	16
	2006	1	3	3			7
	2007	2	8			4	14
	2008	5	2			2	9
	2009	1		2	1	1	5
	2010	19	2				21
	2011	5	4	5		2	16
	2012	3	1	3	2		9
	2013	6		1			7