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Museum of computing looks for new home
'Tragedy' as collection goes into storage

By Nick Heath

Published: Wednesday 02 July 2008

A museum dedicated to the history of computing is looking for a new home and its collection has gone into storage.

Staff at The Museum of Computing in Swindon are hopeful of finding a new site after being given office space to store its thousands of exhibits for 18 months.

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Museum curator Simon Webb described having to lock away the exhibits - which have attracted about 5,000 people annually and taken five years to amass - as "tragic".

The collection includes more than 2,000 hardware exhibits and 1,500 books, manuals and specialist magazines and runs the gamut from the mechanical computers and slide rules, to the first PCs and modern games consoles.

Webb told silicon.com he was reasonably optimistic that the museum would find a new home in Swindon later this year, adding that he had offers from outside but the museum would only leave the town as a last resort.

The museum had to leave its base at the University of Bath Oakdale campus at the end of June because the university outpost is shutting in July. Staff were unable to secure a new venue before the deadline for moving out expired.

Webb said: "We have this fantastic collection and nowhere to put it.

"It is tragic that it should be in storage, it should be out there so people can see how computing has developed over the past 40 years. I am fairly confident and am hoping we will get a firm commitment for a new home in Swindon in a few weeks."

He said they wanted to keep the museum in Swindon as the museum relied on local volunteers, and it is important to celebrate the town's high longstanding tech pedigree that continues to this day, with Intel and Motorola having local offices.

The exhibition needs to have a long-term lease on premises to be granted official museum accreditation.