I held the internet!
With this sunday being Father's Day, I spent some time with my Dad. We decided to go to the North West Computer Museum for a trip down "memory" lane and to see what other cool geeky technology the museum had.
On arrival at the museum, we found that Leigh Spinners Mill, an old Victorian Mill, where the Museum is hosted hosts much more than the Computer Museum. On the first floor, for example, is a small cafe and heritage centre dedicated to the history of the mill. I include some photos below.
As we progressed to the next floor, we found that the Mill hosted an array of shops, including a restaurant/bar, a microbrewery, coffee shop, mini figures shop, vinyl shop, second hand clothes shop and a makers space. The coffee shop, Bo Coffee Co, served some genuinely delicious brownies and the coffee wasn't too bad either. See photos of the shops etc below -
After a coffee and a snoop around the shops, we went up the Computer Museum, which is accessed by a maze of other creative outlets, including a videographers, art studio, cinema and multiple smaller artisan studios. I particularly liked the below artwork -
Entering the Computer Museum, there were an array of posters and notices about the museum and upcoming classes which I found to be very encouraging. It's good to see that efforts are being made to upskill and educate outside of usual routes. If you're interested in the classes, the posters are below -
Inside the Museum, Dad and I found an array of computers and electronics, including some from my dads youth and my own. We started out with some 1970s era computers playing Pacman and moved up towards Dads first computer, where he tried playing Frogger.
As a bit of a Linux nerd, I was also quick to spot the Red Hat Fedora -
As we progressed along the exhibits, we encountered some more 70s/80s machines -
The next section was mostly 90s and early 00s computers and gaming consoles, but among those, was a NeXT Computer developed after Steve Jobs was infamously ousted by Apples board in a dispute with Former Pepsi Director John Sculley. Apple later bought NeXT for the operating system and brought Jobs back onto the board when it was on the verge of bankruptcy.
Given the Museum is interactive, it was possible to go hands on with the NeXT machine. I was mostly interested to see how comparable the operating system was to MacOS and easily found the terminal commands match exactly. For example, using cd to change directories and touch to create a file or mkdir to make a directory worked instantly, which of course, was not the case on other machines like the DOS based Sinclair PC200.
Even the window layout and display boxes are extremely similar. The theming might have changed over time and now be "liquid glass" but the foundation is absolutely there.
Below are images of the NeXT Computer and my use of it.
After tinkering with the NeXT computer, we walked along the row and found the literal internet!
I was very happy to be able to hold the internet, just like the scene in the IT Crowd. This version, of course, is the wired version of the internet whilst the version featured on the IT Crowd was the much more fancy, wireless version.
Along this row were some other computers -
The rest of the museum includes a section dedicated to British computing, a Games Arcade and a VR section. After checking these out, we went for another coffee before leaving, but I'll definitely be back to the Computer Museum. I was very impressed with the exhibits on display and the others working from the Mill too. It's a great use of a historic building that may otherwise be left derelict or be knocked down. Overall, a great way to spend time together learning, laughing and making memories!
