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Comment by rmason | Hacker News Reader

My late father started collecting antique cars in the forties. I used to read his car collector magazines as a kid. They would have detailed stories about 'barn finds' of rare autos and this story reads like the best of them.

I well remember Michigan State's IBM 360 in the computer center back in the seventies. You could see it through glass windows from the hall, they were so proud of that machine.

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Universities were very proud of their computers indeed. At my university too, there was a room with a big window to allow visitors to see the blinking lights on our Connection Machine (CM2)

Still our. I work for a uni. We have five server rooms on display for people to come gawk at. The two important data centers are locked away, but these five don't really contain any data which require hiding so we have them on display.

Freshmen and visitors are always impressed.

Can they awk at them too?

I wonder if the main problem isn't the generational handover of the hobbyist's collection and knowledge. It probably isn't that hard to find someone who'll geek out on old pinball machines, radios, Linotype machines, cars, big honkin' mills and lathes, partly because they remember them when they were younger so there was a strong impression made. Domain knowledge can be ferreted out from some still-living people.

I was thinking about that while watching this guy and his 11 buildings of stuff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InFVp7OV9QI

In those sorts of hobbies, you see a great number of eBay listings containing a caveat along the lines of "estate sale lot, sold as seen". It's great (if somewhat ghoulish) for younger enthusiasts, because you can build a collection quite inexpensively.

I do worry about the loss of provenance. Knowing where an object came from is often more valuable than the object itself; that knowledge is often lost when a child or grandchild just wants to clear out the old man's junk.

What happened to your fathers collection? What cars were in it?

He gradually sold them off, sometimes to hire craftsmen to do work on his prized cars that he couldn't do. Things like upholstery and paint. The car he cared the most about and the last one he sold was his 1926 Wills Sainte Claire. My father sold the Wills Sainte Claire so that he could pay for college for my sister and me. But he remained a life long fan of C. Harold Wills and his company.

With the help of the Wills Sainte Claire museum I reunited my father with that car on his 100th birthday at Kellogg Center on the MSU campus. My dad did so much for me that it made me very proud to give him this much joy. It's the only time in my life that I ever totally stunned him. The classic car magazine,Hemmings, even did a story about it.

https://www.hemmings.com/blog/index.php/2016/07/07/wills-sai...

That's a fantastic story. Thank you. He looks so happy!

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