COMPUTARIUM LCD

NEWS
18 Mar 10 The Computarium has published it's first paper! The Luxemburger Wort ("Die Warte" subset) holds a large article by Claude Baumann (F. Massen being the humble coauthor) on the Kalman filter and it's first applications in the Apollo mission. Many thanks to Claude for choosing to publish this outstanding paper under the Computarium umbrella!
11 Feb 10 The Computarium will participate to the "Vintage Days" organized by the town of Diekirch the 22/23 May 2010. We plan guided visits to our exhibition and several workshops using historical calculating equipment, as Abacus, Napier bones, Slide-rules, Sliding rod calculators and other mechanical and electromechanical machines. All these activities will take place on the second floor of the LCD and will be free of charge.
28 Jan 10 Short 7 minutes video "De Schaaf" showing the making of the extremely complicated Computarium showcase by Menuiserie Kraemer (85 MB, mp4).
30 Oct 09 The work on the TC at the attic progresses as planned. The first room, holding the bureau, repair-shop and a first vitrine is practically finished. The much larger room 2 is still in the works: the most important repairs (especially on the windows) have been done. We moved most of our items to a temporary room, close to the definitive TC. I think that for the moment about 500 working hours have been invested in the TC up to today.

Look at an album here; you will see a picture of room #1, the LED lightings we are installing in the old vitrine and which make a very nice effect, a window before and after repair, Jean-Claude Krack and my-self installing the blue temporary shelves and some more.
11 Jul 09 1.
Great news: The Computarium received a grant from the FNR (Fonds National de la Recherche) to transform a part of the run-down attic of the LCD into a definitive warehouse. Actually we plan to to make this a blend of stock and exhibition rooms. The name is Thesaurus Computarii (TC for short). Three of us (Baumann, Krack, Massen) started work on the first room. Short album here!

2.
The crew is happy to welcome 3 new members: Anouk NEVEN and Julien MEYER who are students in mathematics at the University of Brussels (ULB), and Louis WILMES, an ex-LCD student and a research physicist at ArcelorMittal.
16 May 09 Computarium was present for one day at the "Semaine de la Créativité et de l'Innovation" organized by Luxinnovation at the Kirchberg exposition halls. Click here for more!  
24 Apr 09 Official inauguration of the "Computarium" exhibition landscape: this is a really outstanding piece of showcases designed by architects Hermann & Valentiny and Partners and installed at the 2nd floor of the LCD.
Only a very small sample from our collection can be shown at one time, so we hope to use it as a regularly changing exhibition. See album! A special article on this exhibition landscape will follow asap...
The picture shows in the first front from left to right: F. Massen, M. Schank (MoP), C. Wiseler (minister of Public Works),  A. Kaes (MoP), F. Thillen (LCD), J. Bonert (town council Diekirch), M. Delvaux-Stehres (minister of Education).
19 Feb 09 The Computarium received a valuable gift: a vintage KIENZLE 600 (German made) booking machine from 1961. The gift is made by the Lycée Technique Hôtelier Alexis Heck (LTHAH) and former user and bookkeeper Norbert Rischartz. The machine seems to be in a very good shape. Many thanks!
18 Feb 09 A group of 6 students of the mathematical faculty of the ULB (University Libre de Bruxelles) was on a visit. They are preparing a boot on historic calculators for an exposition " Evolution/Revolution". They will show  vintage  mechanical calculators and several of the most antique electronic pocket calculators from our collection. The groupe is guided by Anouk Neven, a former student of the LCD.  
31 Dec 08 I added a lot of mechanical and electromechanical devices to the Virtual Computarium. Section 1 now contains over 160 items. All slides have an identical layout, all pictures have been replaced by new ones or bettered resolution. Please tell me about any errors you may find.
A Happy New Year 2009 to all visitors, friends, sponsors and collaborators of the Computarium!
17 Dec 08 I got from an eBay bid a working specimen of the first Soviet scientific calculator, the Elekronika C3-15. Look here and here (this picture shows the very strange packaging of old Russian IC's)!
Click here to visit the very interesting Museum of Soviet Calculators.
20 Nov 08 Mr. Norbert Friob, president of the group FNP, donated today a very large set of 16 items from his personal collection to the Computarium. The set holds 5 Facit mechanical calculators, a Precisa printing adder, Diehl and Marchant 4 operations calculators, a smoothly working Comptometer type M., a Olympia 6510 electronic booking machine with an IBM-type spherical printhead, a very old mechanical addressing machine from Sterling Elliott Co., one of the first electronic printing calculators of Burroughs (C2000-C) and 4 more recent electronic printing calculators by Olympia, AEG, Diehl and Casio.
Mr. Friob is a very interesting businessman, a real self-made man at the best. Look here for a short CV. Many thanks from the Computarium crew!
30 Oct 08 I added on page 2 a chapter with photo-albums. These albums contain pictures of our machines taken different artists. The first is an album with the pictures taken by Martin Linster for the Letzebuerger Land.
10 Oct 08 The journalist Peter Feist of the weekly journal Letzebuerger Land  and his photographer were in Diekirch to take a lot of shots of several (mostly mechanical ) calculators. These pictures will be used to illustrate a special upcoming edition on technology and research.
27 Sep 08 Gaul Roland from the National Museum of Military History in Diekirch donated a very rare special computer to the Computarium: it is a vintage calculator used by the Luxembourg Army for artillery calculations. Only 3 of these custom designed computers were built by the former IST (Institut Supérieur de Technologie), now a part of the University of Luxembourg.
14 Jun 08 Karin Probst (the president of the Syndicat d'Initiative), Colette Heirendt and Francis Massen  mounted today a very small exposition of mechanical and electronic devices at the Syndicat d'Initiative of Diekirch. The pico-expo will be visible up to the 4th July. Picture_1 and Picture_2
10 Jun 08 I am preparing a small exhibition for the Syndicat d'Initiative of the town of Diekirch (www.diekirch.lu). We will show some mechanical calculators and a couple of electronic material.
09 Jun 08 Another bad news: The financial contribution asked from the Fond National de la Recherche (www.fnr.lu) was flatly refused. Apparently we need the help from a museum-specialist. The problem is, when we ask for such a specialist help, the payments asked for may well eat up the whole potential subsidy.
08 Jun 08 1. We have many bad news: the two locations where we planned to establish our museum have both been refused by the Administration of Public Buildings and it's minister. We can not use the vast spaces of the attic (3rd floor) because there is no money left to make the necessary transformations, and because it has become a general policy not to allow occupation of such type of places. The alternative (at zero cost) was to use school-room containers that will become redundant in September. This was refused on "esthetic" grounds: the containers will  be demolished to make room for some parking places.
2. Everything is not lost: the Minister Claude Wiseler himself suggested that his administration would build ( and finance) the necessary facilities to make a permanent exposition in one or two  of our large halls. We will not have room enough to show the whole collection, so we must make a careful planning and possibly some rotation with the shown objects.. 
30 Mar 08 The new version 3 of our virtual museum is now finished. It holds about 90% of our collection, and has been divided into 5 sections for ease of use.
28 Mar 08 The scientific radio emission "Quantum" on station 100komma7 by Claude Hallé had its focus on our computarium. Claude Hallé made a 25 minutes long interview with Francis Massen on vintage calculators and computers, and the planned museum. Please listen here (mp3 file, 22 MB)
26 Nov 07 Added the new part 1 with more than 100 mechanical and electromechanical devices to the virtual museum version 3.
24 Sep 07 Ouff!! The Cirque des Sciences has closed. We had a huge success with our workshop "Calculs à l'ancienne" (Vintage calculus), and were sometimes close to exhaustion. The Napier Bones ( and the kit) was an outstanding success, as was the teaching of Abacus computing and the clanking printing adders. Big thanks to all the people working hard to make this happen. See here for an preliminary album and here for definitive album.
14 Jul 07 We are busy preparing our atelier "Calculs à l'ancienne" for the "Cirque des Sciences" (22-23 Sep.2007), an organisation held for the cultural year 2007 at the Abbaye Neumünster, near the Musée National d'Histoire Naturelle (www.mnhn.lu) in Luxembourg-City. We have a 100m2 boot to show and operate mechanical calculators, starting at 1618 with Napier Bones and ending in the 1960's with the last electro-mechanical 4 operation devices built by Monroe, Friden , Mercedes, Cellatron and others. Look here for a detailed overview of the location. We will be found at Pagode ZP_13. Hope to meet you there! (you might want to buy our Napier Bones Kit extraordinaire!)
07 Feb 07 - New page "WORKS" added, with info about ongoing technical work
- Received yesterday an old NCR cash-register and a Burroughs mechanical printing calculator (nine 10 keys rows). Repaired Burroughs today.
02 Feb 07 http://computarium.lcd.lu is online; all new information around the planned museum will be found here!
The collection now holds over 250 items (mechanical and electro-mechanical calculators, slide-rules, mini-computers, microcomputers, handheld calculators...) going back up to 1928. It is the largest collection of vintage computing machinery of Luxembourg.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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