Monthly Archive for January, 2011

Egypt’s military secures famed antiquities museum

Published on January 29, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

From Salon.com…

The Egyptian army secured Cairo’s famed antiquities museum early Saturday, protecting treasures including the famed gold mask of King Tutankhamun from looters.

The greatest threat to the Egyptian Museum first appeared to come from the fire enguling the ruling party headquarters next door on Friday night as anti-government protests roiled the country.

Then dozens of would-be thieves started entering the grounds surrounding the museum.

Suddenly other young men — some armed with truncheons taken from the police — formed a human chain outside the main gates on Tahrir Square in an attempt to protect the collection inside.

“I’m standing here to defend and to protect our national treasure,” said one of the men, Farid Saad, a 40-year-old engineer. More…

From the abacus to the iPod: Computer museum opens $19M exhibition

Published on January 15, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

From Lucas Mearian at Computerworld…

The Computer History Museum this week opens a $19 million, 25,000-square-foot building expansion and a signature exhibition titled “Revolution: The First 2000 Years of Computing.”

In development for more than six years, the new exhibit represents the world’s most comprehensive physical and online exploration of computing history, spanning everything from the abacus and slide rules to robots, Pong and the Internet.

“Many times, people coming to the museum have very basic questions: ‘How did that computer on my desk get there? How did that phone I’ve used for so long get so smart?’ ” said John Hollar, CEO of the museum in Mountain View, Calif. “It’s an exhibition that’s primarily aimed at a nontechnical audience, though there’s a ton of great history and information for the technical audience as well.”

The exhibition is designed to be accessible to visitors in multiple ways and includes documents, video presentations, more than 5,000 images and 1,100 artifacts in 19 galleries. It also features hands-on interactive stations that will demonstrate the principles of computing; for example, visitors will be able to pick up a 24-lb. Osborne computer or play a game of Pong, Pac-Man or Spacewar. More…