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Recent and Upcoming Events at the DigiBarn & Paying Us a Visit


The DigiBarn Remodeling has been completed as of February 2013
Cleanup, cataloguing and setup to be completed next, we need help!

Good news! The closure of the DigiBarn since the 2010 season is coming to an end, the new roof is on and we now must clean up, catalogue and set up the exhibits and will be ready to reopen for private tours in the summer of 2013. If you would like to help please get in touch! The situation that led to this, a major roof leak in the winter of 2009-10, points out that we need to obtain funds for building a proper raised floor and sealing up the lower display rooms.

If you are a scholar, a person from the history, or serious media and wish to make a case for visiting the collection, you can contact curator Bruce Damer to discuss options.

In the meantime we invite you to explore our Cyber-museum which remains open 24/7/365!

Also see our past newsletters for recent news and take a look at the events we have held since 1998.

Recent & Past Events

Years - 2013 | 2012 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 1998-2000 (and before) Events and Visits

Also see DigiBarn Stories and read the DigiBarn Newsletters for more events and news.


2013 Events and Visits


New! DigiBarn reboot is underway!
See a tour of the museum as it comes back to life after four years on hiaitus!

2012 Events and Visits


August 2012: DigiBarn "computer family" exhibit at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History.

2009 Events and Visits

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Bruce Damer with Tony Sale in front of the Colossus on visit to Bletchley Park
(February 2009)

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MacHeads the Movie Premiere at MacWorld 2009, San Francisco, See DigiBarn co-founders Bruce Damer and Allan Lundell on stage as well as many other "MacHeads" (Jan 7, 2009)

2008 Events and Visits


Special Group Event and Digibarn Tour
(September 27, 2008)


Summer 2008 Digibarn Open House #1
(August 16, 2008 - note there was also another open house on August 23rd but no photos!)


American Life TV shoot
(July 29, 2008)

2007 Events and Visits


The LINC Event at the Vintage Computer Festival and the Digibarn
(November 4, 2007)


Digibarn Session at the Vintage Computer Festival 10
(November 3, 2007)


Fall Digibarn Open House
(October 27, 2007)

The Digibarn had two Summer Open House days on Saturday August 11th and Saturday August 18th, 2007 as well as a shoot by CNET on August 17th, 2007 (see pictures below).


Digibarn Open House
(August 18, 2007)

CNET (News.com) visit and shoot
(August 17, 2007)

First Open House of 2007!
(August 11, 2007)

New pictorial tour of the Digibarn!


Come take a Pictorial Tour of the Digibarn
, newly set up for 2007!


Macintosh culture documentary film crew at the Digibarn
(January 8, 2007)

2006 Events and Visits


Steve Wozniak visits the Digibarn
(for a tour and a shoot by the Discovery Channel, Dec 14, 2006)


Digibarn's Apple@30 event at the Vintage Computer Festival
(Nov 4, 2006)


Our recording of the Sol-20 30th birthday event at the Vintage Computer Festival (Nov 5, 2006)


Vintage Computer Festival visit
(November 5, 2006)


Ken Sumrall's "securing the Cray" visit
(October 15, 2006)

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Summer Open House #2
(August 12, 2006)


Special coverage of the 25th Anniversary of the launch of the IBM Personal Computer
(Aug 1981 - Aug 2006)


Summer Open House #1
(July 29, 2006)


The Digibarn reopens!
Our first open house of 2006 (June 11, 2006)


Curator Bruce Damer and the Digibarn project are this month's "Featured Commoner" at the Creative Commons (June 2006)


The great ReOrg of Winter 2006!
Cleaning, building, reordering (Jan-May 2006)

Visit of Dorien Zandbergen, Jim Funaro and friends (Jan 2006)

2005 Events and Visits


Report on the 30th birthday of the Homebrew Computer Club
"Homebrew@30"
A special event produced and hosted by the DigiBarn was held at the Vintage Computer Festival 8.0 (November 5-6, 2005)


Digibarn open house for the attendees of the Vintage Computer Festival 8.0
(Nov 6, 2005)


Summer Open House!
(August 21, 2005)


May 9, 2005: The DigiBarn supported the Internet Archive's brief to the Copyright Office on orphan works, please read the full brief here (2.5MB PDF). Exerpt of our statement
:

The Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke University Law School and the DigiBarn Computer Museum have endorsed the Internet Archive’s proposal for a safe harbor for archives and libraries that engage in digital preservation and access subject to appropriate procedures designed to protect copyright holders’ interests.

and

The DigiBarn Computer Museum, an online museum dedicated to the history of the personal computer, notes that with respect to over 100,000 artifacts over several years, not one copyright owner has invoked DigiBarn’s “escape clause” permitting the owner of the copyright in any work to request that DigiBarn remove his or her work from its site. See generally DigiBarn Computer Museum OW0049, Comment on Orphan Works Notice of Inquiry, March 25, 2005, at https://www.copyright.gov/orphan/comments/index.html.


Vulcan Ventures, Weatherhead Experience Design visit DigiBarn
(April 27, 2005)

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Spring Open House!
(April 2, 2005)


Discovery Channel Shoot
(March 1, 2005)


Potts family visit
(February 24, 2005)


Shelly Errington's UCSC Class visit
(February 14, 2005)

2004 Events and Visits


Neal Stephenson and Brewster Kahle visit the Digibarn!
(November 2004)


The Maze War 30 Year Retrospective, a special event at the Vintage Computer Festival (November 7th, 2004)


In Search of the Valley
film crew visits the Digibarn (September 2004)


DigiBarn Co-Founder Allan Lundell interviewed on the French Minitel system
(September 20, 2004)

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DigiBarn special exhibit at the Osborne Odyssey event
at the Computer History Museum (March 25, 2004)

DigiBarn Spring Cleaning 2004 (March 2004)

DigiBarn Open House (Feb 15, 2004)


Ivan and Bert Sutherland speak with Bob Sproull at the Computer History Museum
(Feb 2004)

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The DigiBarn had a special exhibit of early Macintosh artifacts at the Computer History Museum during the Marketing of the Macintosh panel presentation (Jan 2004)

2003 Events and Visits


The DigiBarn Produced the Xerox Alto 30th Birthday Celebration & D* Machines Extravaganza at the Vintage Computer Festival (October 11-12th, 2003)

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BBC TV at the DigiBarn! (July 2003)


Arrival of the Xerox Alto II XM at the DigiBarn!
(June 2003)


Open House at the DigiBarn
(June 14, 2003)

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Computer History Museum Alpha Opening!
(June 2, 2003)


The VCForum is launched!
(May 2003)

The VCForum (for Vintage Computing Forum) is a web-based threaded message board with a wide variety of forums already in place in support of the vintage computer community. Additional forums can and will be added as required by the community. It is our sincere hope that this message board will become a central gathering place for people interested in vintage computing and computer history on the World Wide Web.
The DigiBarn thanks Erik Klein of Vintage-Computer for this important initiative!

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Interview in New York for CBS Sunday Morning News (on anniversary of Xerox Star) (aired Sunday April 27th, 2003)


Opener for 2003! With students from Central Connecticut State University
(April 2003)


Opening preparations for 2003 season
(April 2003)


Visit of DigiBarn Curator Bruce Damer to The Smithsonian Institution's Information Age exhibit in Washington DC
(January 2003)

2002 Events and Visits


S-100 Restoration Project Initated!
(November 2, 2002)

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DigiBarn Open House with visit by Ted Nelson
(Oct 27, 2002)

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Vintage Computer Festival,
(October 26-27, 2002)


Our October 5, 2002 Open House, see the report!



Bruce Damer and Galen Brandt were featured on Geek Speak
, KUSP 88.9 FM (Sept 23, 2002)

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Gordon Bell visits the Digibarn (Sept 18, 2002) Len Shustek visits the Digibarn (Sept 24, 2002)

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Visit of Sarah Tasker's UC Berkeley class to the DigiBarn (sept 13, 2002)

Oink! DigiBarn Opened on Saturday July 13th, 2002!

see our preliminary photo albums of the event


Preparation
for the July 13th, 2002 opening!

Logos and sketchs of exhibit plans



DigiBarn featured on BBC Radio 4, Saturday June 29, 2002
see this page for internet version of Programme 4, and this page for participants



Arrival and First Booting of the Xerox 6085 Workstations
at the DigiBarn in June 2002

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Move of the Cray Q2 Supercomputer out of the DigiBarn to Lawrence Livermore Labs for their 50th anniversary celebrations (June 2002)


Glen Ropella and Wired News reporter Leander Kahney's visit to the museum and his resulting stories on April 15 and on April 22, 2002


Arrival of the Cray 1 Supercomputer and Cray Q2 Prototype at the DigiBarn (April 2002)

2001 Events and Visits


The BBC Visits the DigiBarn! (November 2001)

On November 29, 2001, BBC Radio 4 joined a special group brought together by Sally Richards to tape a prorgramme on the theme of "the future of Silicon Valley" which will air in Spring 2002. The interviews got off to a great start as the attendees (including Matt Hamrick (left), Bob Glass, (center) and interviewer above) as folks were opened up to talk about their pasts and then got around to talking about the future. The DigiBarn served its purpose as a "memory palace for the digitally inclined". See some photos of the BBC visit here.


Bruce Damer and Allan Lundell initiated the DigiBarn collection on May 7, 2001 following an earlier March 5th visit to the Computer History Museum (then at Moffett Field).

1998-2000 (and before) Events and Visits

We have had many other special guests since and during the initiation phase of the museum from May 2001. Here are a few of the milestones...

The construction phase of the upstairs rooms of the barn happened in the Summer of 2000.

The wiring of the barn happened in August 2000.

Ancient Oaks Farm (together with the barn) was purchased by Bruce Damer in the Summer of 1998.


The Digibarn project got its official start following the Final Public Demonstration of the Xerox Star 8010 at Xerox PARC (June 1998) with the creation of a personal web site featuring the event and Bruce Damer's own history with Elixir and the Elixir Desktop (derivative of the Star interface).

The collecting of the story of Xerox PARC started in the late 1980s when future DigiBarn curator Bruce Damer was working for Elixir Technologies Corporation and visited Xerox PARC.

Bruce Damer got hooked on computers at age 19 in the spring of 1981 at Cariboo College in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada. More about Bruce's History with computers and collecting here, and about Bruce's current life here.

Contact us if you have a story to tell, or other information about any topic in computer history, donations of physical artifacts on our wish list (or what you think we need), virtual contibutions such as pictures, movies, documents or text for the web site, to volunteer your time, or to request being signed up on our mailing list (its all on this one handy form).
You can also sign our guest book or sign yourself up on our mailing list to receive our newsletters and news of upcoming events or read about the DigiBarn in the news media and see DigiBarn TV and hear DigiBarn Radio. And of course don't miss our collections!
And our newest feature: the DigiBarn Blog!

To be part of an upcoming open house or request a special tour of the DigiBarn, please contact us via our web form.

If you need to reach us more urgently (especially for press deadlines), please contact us via our web form and include your contact information including phone number.


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