Visiting the History of Computing and Play

2 days ago

The author visited two museums: the Large Scale Systems Museum in Pittsburgh, focused on computing history, and the National Museum of Toys and Miniatures in Kansas City, which explores toys and miniatures.
The Large Scale Systems Museum is volunteer-run, appointment-only, and features mainframes, early personal computers, and rare items like a Cray supercomputer, a Singer computer, and ASCII Pac-Man.
The Toy and Miniature Museum divides its exhibits: toys and games upstairs, and detailed miniatures downstairs, where miniatures are crafted to mimic real objects in materials and functionality.
Both museums highlight the intersection of technology and play, showing how innovation influences toys and how playfulness is embedded in computing history.
The author reflects on how these visits illustrate the intertwining of technology, society, and play, encouraging broader thinking about history and culture.

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