COCKEYSVILLE, Md. — Art imitates life. Or at least, that's what they say at the Computer Museum.
In a sea of warehouses and nondescript buildings in Cockeysville, sits a unique collection.
"Our passion is that we want to teach you about this stuff," said Brendan Becker, curator of the System Source Computer Museum. "We do get people that are you know, scared of technologies or they're like, 'oh my god my phone is listening to me." But listen to these guys. They know their stuff. "My hope is that maybe by understanding their technology they'll be a little less frightened of it."
The overarching organization is System Source, which is still running today.
"The Vice President and co-founder of the company, things get obsolete over time, and he decided to throw them in a museum of his own. So they are also our hosts. My Museum is inside of their museum," Becker explained.
When you first walk in, you might think you're in the wrong place, but you're not.
Alpha, Syed and their mom came here to find out about a pretty specific technology. Syed described the question they brought, "we were learning the difference between, old TV screens and the newer ones that are on the phone like LCD."
You'll see technology from as early as the 1800s in this museum.
A visit gives you the story behind every technological advancement you can think of and deep knowledge of how it works. It's where the physical world meets the information world. Things like the first super computer by the Cray company, the tenth Apple computer every made and even the first video phones.
"One of the biggest things that [people] can learn is just how fast technology is moving. I think it's important to make sure that it isn't forgotten," Becker said.
Becker is the founder of the Bloop Museum, one of the three museums housed in the building.
The Bloop museum is all things electronic entertainment. A music composer for video games by trade, Becker as tour guide takes you through the development of the purely fun side of electronic technology. "I probably have about 30,000 square feet worth of computer and game and electronic entertainment stuff."
"We can take people down all sorts of rabbit holes since some people live completely online, one of the things that I really love to highlight is not just the development of the internet, but online services in general," Becker said.
This is a living museum. A place to avoid data loss. "That's one of the reasons that the museum exists is because I want to make sure that we teach people about the technology so that they know what it's good for and what it's useful for." And to show us we are in control of where we go from here.
To visit the museum, click here.
The museum is also raising money to build a new building, specifically an Electronic Entertainment Building. To donate, click here.
