The subject of this year's special exhibition is "Computers from Germany".
The following exhibitions have been registered:
Ingo Albrecht, No. 1
Jeroen Baten, No. 2
HDDLab Datenrettung, No. 3
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Christian-M. Hamann and Rainer Bruns, No. 4
Philipp Maier, No. 9
Wolfgang Nake, No. 16
Oldenburger Computer-Museum e.V., No. 17
Computers from America? Yes. These computers are direct imports from the USA. They date from the earliest days of personal computing to the mid-1990s. See a glimpse of how far computer technology advanced in only 15 years: from the single-board computers KIM-1 and SYM-1, to an HP-85A from Los Alamos, to the VIC-20, the first computer to sell a million, to the TI-99/4A, to Mattel's Aquarius, to the Coleco Adam that was bundled with a printer, to a Zenith luggable from before laptops were around, to the Atari Mega ST, the last computer from Atari, to the Amiga 1200/HD, a computer for artists. Most of these systems use NTSC and all are from the USA. Take a look and see some of the computers from the start of the Computer Age! Richard Eseke, No. 18
Denmark had three major computer hardware manufacturers back in the 1970s and 1980s: Regnecentralen (RC), which was originally funded by the Marshall Plan and had been the governmental computation institute ever since the beginning, Christian Rowsing, which joined the party later on and finally Danish Data Electronics (DDE). All of them were internationally active companies that exported hardware to the entire world. There were also a handful of small niche manufacturers that made systems such as the Comet, Butler, James and the Vega Computer, which were largely one-hit wonders, all with exciting backstories. We will bring a working Comet and an RC Piccolo, both of which are Z80-based machines. We will also showcase an RC Piccoline and an RC Partner, which are Intel 80186-based computers running Concurrent CP/M. Furthermore you can expect to see a static display of a Butler, James and Vega Computer, not to mention one of the first DDE systems. The exhibition is accompanied by a talk about the history of the Danish computer industry of the 1900s. Mike from RetroComputing with Mike (in cooperation with the Danish Historic Computer Society and the Danish Unix User Group), No. 19
Jörg Gudehus, No. 20
Joachim Schwanter, No. 22
Norbert Opitz and Ingo Truppel, No. 33
Andrea Knaut, No. 34
Wolfgang Wilker, No. 35
Work group "Lebendige Technik" of the German Museum of Technology Berlin, No. 31
Alexander Vollschwitz, No. 32
Jörg Hoppe, No. 36
Oscar Vermeulen, No. 37
Marcel will bring his Gigatron TTL kit computer. A single-board computer based on simple 7400-series logic, yet powerful enough to play video games and run BASIC. Marcel will demonstrate a new feature: the ability to run 6502 programs, such as Microchess from 1976. All without a microprocessor on board, let alone a 6502! Marcel van Kervinck, No. 38
Marcus Dachsel, No. 39
Volker Herrmann, No. 40
Joachim Brandenburg, No. 42
Georg Basse, No. 43
Frank Pfuhl, No. 44
German Museum of Technology Berlin, No. 46 (in the Ladestraße)
Leibniz, Zuse, Nixdorf and others – German inventors and companies have had a lasting effect in computing history. As a location for research and development, as an important market, and as a place of manufacturing, both the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic have played an important role in history. As the 50th anniversary of renowned East German manufacturer Robotron approaches, we celebrate the event with a special exhibition on computers from Germany. We thus invite exhibitors to present (working) historic computers with a relation to Germany – independently of whether they came from a German company, were designed or "Made in Germany".
Paul A. Dietz, No. 5
Thomas Falk, No. 6
Rainer Glaschick, No. 7
Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum, No. 8
If the sophisticated nerd of 1984 founds a computer company then the product of choice is of course a Motorola 68000-based modular computer that is faster and less expensive than a monolithic, non-extensible Apple Macintosh. The operating system is to be written in Modula-2 using the self-developed Modula-2 compiler (that is of course also included). The cheetah (Gepard in German) is selected as the company name. Computer of this brand will, later on, control cool things such as experimental university-developed ion drives. Fritz Hohl, No. 10
Nadja Buttendorf, No. 11
The collage is based on authentic materials such as videos, photos, and papers from various activities of bcd CyberneticArt team on "The Action for the Promotion of [New] Tendencies ([N]T)" with international partners in the last decades. Among others, included are excerpts from interviews with the German computer art pioneers Frieder Nake und Herbert W. Franke. They have been recorded live in Karlsruhe at ZKM's [N]T retrospective-like exhibition with focus on the introduction of computers in art in 2009. The background for certain scenarios was, luckily enough, decorated with the restored and fully operational Zuse Z22 computer with serial number 13, produced in 1958. Certain materials deal with Max Bense's Information Aesthetics and his historical influence on the then young computer artists, e.g. Nees and Nake: "Computerkunst – On the Eve of Tomorrow". bcd CyberneticArt team (Königswinter, Berlin, Zagreb): Miro A. Cimerman (Berlin) and Dunja Donassy-Bonačić (per DFNVC from Königswinter), No. 12
Today, Konrad Zuse is acknowledged internationally as the man who designed and built the world's first digital computer. His first experimental model V1, known later as Z1, worked purely mechanically. It was microprogrammed and implemented floating-point arithmetic. The machine was operational in 1938 after only two years of construction time. Sadly, it was never presented to the scientific community. As the machine was not very reliable, Zuse immediately started working on his next experimental model V2 or, later, Z2 which used relays in the ALU but retained the mechanical storage of the V1. The next test version was the V3 or Z3, now in all-relay technology. On May 12, 1941, the machine was presented to a delegation of the Deutsche Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt (German Aviation Research Center) and, hence, was established in the scientific community. All three machines were destroyed by air raids in World War II and in particular no documentation on the Z1 survived the war. In 1986, when Konrad Zuse was 76 years old, he began reconstructing the Z1 from memory to prove to the world that it had been possible to construct this machine at that time and that it could have been functional. This reconstruction is presented here at the German Museum of Technology in Berlin. For a better understanding of Konrad Zuse's mechanical logic technology, I built a model of a cascadable 2-bit adder using aluminium strips, distance sleeves and screws. On this model, you can try out and understand the function of Zuse's half-adders and his one-step carry function. Klemens Krause (Computer museum of the University of Stuttgart computer sciences faculty), No. 13
Jürgen Weigert, No. 14
Thomas Woinke and Marko Lauke, No. 15
Jörg Gudehus, Albert Dommer and Stephan Hübener, No. 21
Günter Rösch, No. 23
Steffen Gruhn, No. 24
Dirk Kahnert, No. 25
Jesse and Klaus Fischer, No. 26
Christian Schmolke, No. 27
Christian Schmolke, No. 28
Rainer Siebert and Stefan Höltgen, No. 29
Ansgar Kückes und Klaus Kaiser, No. 30
Dr. Bernd Kokavecz, No. 41
Photo exhibition. Institute Heinrich Heidersberger gGmbH, No. 45 (in the middle foyer)
More information about the exhibitions is available in German.
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