Discovery of Cold War-era rare Eastern Bloc computers in a German hangar

4 hours ago

On July 26, 2006, CHM curator Dag Spicer received an email about a lost trove of rare computers in a warehouse in Castrop-Rauxel, Germany, leading to an investigation.
CHM curators visited and found a vast warehouse filled with hundreds of historical computing artifacts from the 1930s to the 1980s, including Eastern Bloc systems and German/European computing systems.
They implemented a grid system to catalog the warehouse's contents, discovering media, documents, and hardware like mainframes, minicomputers, disk drives, and plotters.
The collection was believed to have been assembled by Professor Walter Ameling from RWTH Aachen University, with many items bearing marks from the Computer Museum of Aachen (CMA).
Over a ten-day visit, curators evaluated over 1,000 objects against CHM's holdings, selecting items to avoid duplication and ensure significance, resulting in 2,056 artifacts acquired, now part of 'the SAP Collection.'
Significant shipping costs for seven tractor-trailers were covered by CHM Trustee Ike Nassi, requiring CHM to expand its storage with a new climate-controlled facility.
During the visit, a live 500-pound Allied bomb was discovered nearby and safely dismantled, highlighting the historical danger of the WWII-era site.
The discovery is considered one of the world's great amateur computing collections, preserved at CHM as a reflection of computing's past.

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