Living Computers: Museum + Labs will live on, in spirit, far from Seattle.
The Paul Allen estate announced Thursday that it has sold the remaining historical computing and technology artifacts and systems, storytelling content and exhibits, and educational materials previously housed at LCM to Computer Museum of America (CMoA), a 5-year-old institution just north of Atlanta.
The move serves as a final development for Living Computers, a museum and educational space started in 2012 by Allen, the late Microsoft co-founder, as a hands-on, hometown showcase for rare computers and other technology.
Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. The news comes on the same day that a three-sale auction of other Allen items — including many from LCM — concluded, pulling in a total of $16.8 million. The Allen estate will donate all proceeds from the LCM sale and auction to charity, as per Allen’s wishes.
Located south of downtown Seattle, LCM grew to become home to the world’s largest collection of fully restored and useable supercomputers, mainframes, minicomputers and microcomputers. It closed just before the pandemic in 2020 and never reopened. The Allen estate announced in June that the closure was permanent.
CMoA is located in Roswell, Ga., 20 minutes outside of Atlanta. The nonprofit institution was started by Lonnie Mimms, a commercial real estate developer and longtime collector of computing artifacts.
“We couldn’t be more proud to carry on the legacy of the former Living Computers Museum, and Paul Allen’s passion for the history of computing, its evolution, and its global impact,” Mimms said in a statement provided by the Allen estate. “Our institution has worked for years to preserve and protect such technology as a critical record of the innovation process, and the chance to steward thousands of items from LCM will further enhance our mission to share and celebrate these important stories.”
CMoA features about 34,000 square feet of exhibit space as well as event space, classrooms, a ballroom and storage. Located in a two-story building, the museum is currently built out on one floor, with plans to develop the second.
It will be some time before items from Living Computers find their way into CMoA’s displays. Organizing, cataloging and storing truckloads of items from Seattle will be a “huge effort” according to Rena Youngblood, executive director of CMoA.
“I’m really proud that we’re going to be able to take so much of what [LCM] was and bring it back for exhibition and study,” Youngblood said in a phone interview with GeekWire on Thursday. “A lot of the museum will live on.”
While Atlanta may seem like a far-off destination from Seattle and the region where Microsoft and other tech companies have boomed, the city prides itself on its tech and innovation chops. Youngblood said it’s often referred to as the “Silicon Valley of the South” and technology is springing up all over Georgia and the metro Atlanta area in particular. Microsoft also has a large presence in the Atlanta area.
Allen’s estate, led by his sister Jody Allen, has been divesting a variety of his projects and investments since his death in 2018, including Seattle’s Cinerama movie theater, the Everett, Wash.-based Flying Heritage and Combat Armor Museum, Vulcan Productions, Stratolaunch, the superyacht Octopus, and other assets.
The LCM collection headed to Atlanta does not include items that were auctioned by Christie’s in New York across three sales. That event, titled “Gen One: Innovations from the Paul G. Allen Collection,” was billed as “a celebration of first-generation technologies and the pioneering minds behind them” and featured more than 150 items, not all of which were part of Living Computers.
- A live sale on Tuesday titled called “Pushing Boundaries: Ingenuity from the Paul G. Allen Collection,” featured 36 items, including a 1939 letter from Albert Einstein to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, which fetched $3.9 million. The sale total was $10 million.
- An online sale titled “Firsts: The History of Computing” featured 58 items. It ended Thursday after collecting $3.6 million, including $882,000 for an Apple Lisa 1 microcomputer.
- Another online sale, titled “Over the Horizon: Art of the Future from the Paul G. Allen Collection,” included 57 20th century paintings and drawings other items devoted to futuristic visions. That sale also ended Thursday and made $2.8 million.
While another institution has stepped up to preserve and showcase the LCM artifacts, where the history will continue to inform a new generation of museum patrons, its move will surely be seen by many as a loss for the Seattle region.
In June, fans of the museum expressed regret that LCM couldn’t be saved, and some questioned at the time why Allen made no plans for its continuation after his passing. Others who donated machines or artifacts to LCM worried that their contributions would be scattered, discarded, and potentially lost forever.
Leonard Garfield, executive director of Seattle’s Museum of History and Industry, previously told GeekWire that Living Computers was a very important resource in the city that went beyond just sharing the story of the tech industry over the years, or celebrating the legacy of Microsoft and leaders like Allen and Bill Gates.
He hoped that some of the pieces from Allen’s collection would remain in the Seattle area, calling the history of such items “transformational” to Seattle.
“Preserving the history of that and making it available in our community is something that is important, and it was incredibly valuable that Mr. Allen was able to do that with the Living Computers Museum,” Garfield said in June. “Hopefully some of that heritage and that storytelling and that opportunity to really appreciate that history will remain within our community as well.”
CMoA’s Youngblood said Thursday that the Living Computers items will be in good hands.
“I can understand where people are feeling the way they might have felt,” she said. “But for these items, at least they are with a nonprofit museum that values the technology and the innovators who gave them to us.”
Related coverage:
- Seattle’s Living Computers Museum logs off for good as Paul Allen estate will auction vintage items
- Fans upset by closure of Living Computers question why Seattle museum couldn’t be saved
- They gave machines to Living Computers for preservation, but museum’s closure is a bitter end
- Go back inside Seattle’s Living Computers, virtually, via 3D tour updated with links to auction items
