Technology, History, and Summer Camp at the Rhode Island Computer Museum

WARWICK, R.I. (WLNE)- For more than 30 years, the Rhode Island Computer Museum has been collecting and cataloguing the evolution of technology. And technology sure has changed fast! From the punch cards of the 1930s to the desktop of today, we have seen giant machines get smaller and faster with a huge increase in storage capacity.

An excellent example is their Digital PDP 12. Made in 1969 in Maynard, Massachusetts, and installed in Warwick in 1972, this mammoth computer is the home of the first video game, Space War! The phone in your pocket with 128 gigabytes of storage has more than 26 thousand times the storage capacity of this ancient beast at only 5 megabytes.

And that’s what’s special about the RI Computer Museum, you can play Space War! on the machine it was made for.

Michael Thompson, a docent of the RI Computer Museum explains their mission, “Our idea is to have everything interactive so you can actually play with the machines and it’s a very different experience to touch buttons and type on things and play with period machines” Michael Thompson, a docent of the RI Computer Museum said.

If you want to play Oregon Trail on an Apple 2 as it was intended, this is the place for you! There is much more here than computers.

“I’ve learned a lot of things,” Hunter Formiglio, a RI Computer Museum Summer Camper, said. “I’ve learned to make wind turbines, learned to 3D model. I’ve learned about circuits.”

With a museum that relies so heavily on electricity, you can imagine the costs to keep the lights on.

“It’s difficult to run a museum on what people donate or pay admission so we’re always looking for other sources of revenue to keep us afloat,” Thompson said.

This is where Hollywood comes in. The RI Computer Museum was approached to rent out vintage technology to some pretty big Hollywood productions, including shows like Mad Men, Fallout, Halt and Catch Fire and Severance. Movies like Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery and Hidden Figures have used items from here.

Back in Warwick, it’s a tactile experience of history.

“We’ve got all the original machines that these people played with and it’s an interesting e4xperience for the younger kids to do retro gaming, but to do it on real equipment, not some modern implementation of the retro machine,” Thompson said. “It’s the real thing!”

If you would like to own some vintage tech, the Rhode Island Computer Museum is hosting its’ annual Warehouse Tour and Flea Market in its’ North Kingstown location this Sunday. For more information on the Museum and the Warehouse Tour click here.