After nearly 8 years of being at one location, we moved our office (Vishwak Solutions) from T.Nagar to Guindy recently. It turned out we had accumulated a lot of Computer Peripherals, Accessories, Software & Books which are no more in use and more of antique pieces. The collection starts from my early days with technology (From DOS 4 and FoxBase era). There is simply no space in the new office for these.
So I setup a small gallery in the library area at the T.Nagar building. The gallery (kind of a micro museum) contains
- Early iMac
- versions of Microsoft Hardware (keyboard, mouse)
- floppies, CDs
- Indian clone of Microsoft Office
- Sun Star Office, Sun Solaris
- MSDN CDs & DVDs
- MS-DOS, Windows 98, Windows 2000
- Norton PC Anywhere
- Old computer books
- even a VHS Cassette of Professional Training on Windows NT
Computer History Gallery by Venkatarangan
Abroad, I have seen Software Companies like Microsoft (Redmond), Intel (Santa Clara), San Jose Tech Museum in USA and Chocolate museum in Germany have got fine museums exhibiting their history and technology for the public benefit. This educates future generations in the past and encourages them to pursue similar dreams. Unfortunately, there are no such efforts to build these museums by the IT Majors in India like TCS or INFOSYS. Yes, they can’t display their software work (which are job contracts and confidential), but they can build a generic computer museum for common good. These can include apart from past technologies, present and future technologies to educate the general public and build Digital awareness.