01 March 2011 16:01

Computing museum looks for backers in fight for Cambridge existence

Author // Lautaro VargasPosted in // The Cluster

Those machines are 30 years old! (L-R) Neil Davidson of Red Gate, Mike Muller of Arm and museum founder, Jason Fitzpatrick in support of Centre for Computing History

A museum tracing the history of computing is fighting to raise enough initial funds to make the move into Cambridge that would release further donations and secure its future.

The Centre for Computing History has already raised £10,000 of unconditional funding from Red Gate Software and money from Arm Holdings. However, several other potential funders have said their money is conditional on the museum securing an appropriate site for its intended switch from Haverhill.

“We are in a chicken and egg situation,” said Jason Fitzpatrick, who is behind the museum. “We are trying to raise funds, but companies want to know were we’ll be before giving us the money, but we need the money before we know where we’ll be.”

Fitzpatrick, a computer fan whose personal collection was the foundation for the museum, says there are several potential sites, including a 20,000 sq ft facility behind Newmarket Road, providing ample space and a connection to the A14 for non-Cambridge visitors.

The museum would ideally be closer to Cambridge city centre, and a 10,000 sq ft facility would be enough. However, sites have to be viable within the current cash constraints, which is why the museum is eager to raise further funds.

Fitzpatrick believes businesses will want to support a project that ultimately tells a story that’s fundamental to much of the Cambridge cluster: “If you take a company like Arm, this is their history we are preserving.”

The explosive growth of home computers in the 1980s was sparked in Cambridge, with two local companies vying for supremacy - as immortalised in the BBC dramatisation, Micro Men. Acorn (which gave birth to Arm) saw its BBC Micro deployed in classrooms up and down the country, while Sinclair made home computing more affordable with its ZX series (ZX80, ZX81 and ZXSpectrum).

“A lot of people – including myself and many of my colleagues at Red Gate – owe a tremendous amount to the UK computer industry of the 1980s”, said Neil Davidson, co-CEO of Red Gate.

“I grew up with the Acorn Electron and BBC Micro. This is one way of saying thank you, and to make sure we look forward to the future as well as celebrating the past of Cambridge’s role in computing.”

The museum currently occupies 3200 sq ft of which only 1000 sq ft is dedicated to displays and Fitzpatrick sees Cambridge as the natural home for its new location.

A larger site would allow the museum to go beyond a simple display set up and provide interactive opportunities, allowing visitors to play their favourite games on machines such as the ZX Spectrum and the BBC Micro.And they won’t have to wait 20 minutes for a cassette to load the game as the computers are hooked up to modern memory devices.

As well as an attraction for nostalgic computer fans, the museum plans to bring some of the history to children by opening up to school visits or taking machines such as the BBC Micro into schools and giving pupils a chance to experience the simple computer programing which inspired thousands of children, including Davidson, in the 1980s.

The history of computing at Cambridge University stretches even further back: Charles Babbage in the early 1800s originated the concept of a programmable computer with his first ideas for a calculating machine; J J Thomson discovered the electron in 1897 setting the foundation for modern physics, electronics and computer technology; Alan Turing in the 1930s was a founder of computer science and cryptographer; Maurice Wilkes developed the EDSAC, the first stored program digital computer in the 1940s and then worked in the 1980s with Andy Hopper on the Cambridge Fast Ring, a pioneering computer network that would later form the basis of broadband internet.