Online exhibitions can lose people when they focus too much on explanatory text that can feel abstract, rather than grounding the narrative in lived experience through specificity, i.e. objects, artefacts, and testimonials.
Therefore I propose we keep the online exhibition narrative tightly focused around objects that exemplify the story we want to tell, centering those objects rather than our interpretation of them.
I've taken Gavin's messaging document and the exhibition space layout, and laid out a narrative in 5 groups, each with 2-3 key points based on an object or testimonial.
What messaging is missing? What do you want people to come away understanding?
Are there relevant objects for each of these key points? What object stories am I missing?
Standout Oral Histories that should be included in the narrative?
Find your way around:
1000 years in the making
- Geography/Transport: Why Reading? - a map of the Thames/Kennet? A railway construction photograph?
- People: Reading's Industry Legacy - something about the Abbey or 4b's?
- History of computing/Development of Technology - H&P early computer room? Jacquard loom? something
Reading in 1964: A Snapshot
- History of Computing - White Heat; miniskirt, mini cooper, minicomputer
- Talking Head - what was it like to live/work in Reading in 1964? What were people worried about, excited about, thinking about?
Reading in the 1960s
Ken Senior was sent by DEC from the USA and arrived in Reading in 1965. Here he recounts his first impressions of the town.
- Pete Lomas on the lifechanging PDP-8 that inspired him to create Raspberry Pi?
PDP-8
Minicomputers like this PDP-8 were revolutionary - smaller, more versatile and significantly cheaper than the dominant systems of the time. More than 100 companies made minis but DEC prevailed and the PDP-8 was the first commercially successful mini. This PDP-8 is believed to have been made in Galway, Ireland. DEC’s Galway factory was opened in 1971 to keep pace with demand.
Kindly Lent by The National Museum of Computing
Building of DEC Park/'Peak Dec'
- 1981 DEC Park 'the DEC Way' - oral histories?
DEC culture
Pete Goodwin discusses DEC’s workplace culture and the fun he had while working at DEC Park in the early 1980s.
- Women of DEC - computing and gender
Women in computing
Here Angela Shore and Jean Hearn talk about their careers in computing.
- what kind of computers were being made, and what were they used for? what would it have been like to use one?
DEC's legacy
- DEC's early customers - nuclear weapons testing, the concorde
- DEC and the development of the Internet - oral histories?
Digital Equipment Corporation Circuit Boards
This set of computer circuit boards demonstrates the evolution of computing circuitry from the early 1960s to the mid-1990s. The processing power of the early hand-wired boards is dwarfed by DEC’s later Alpha Chip, which was so powerful it made today’s processing speeds possible and paved the way for the Internet. Technology continues to evolve, and a typical smart phone has processing power equivalent to filing cabinets full of these tiny Alpha chips.
Internet, Innovation and Solutions
DEC’s European business expanded into new territory during the 1990s with innovative applications of computerised technology. Within months of the fall of the Berlin wall, a development group based at DEC Park had opened offices across former Soviet states. Paul Evans and David Probert wrote a non-technical guide to the internet which were translated into several languages, including Arabic and Hebrew. The processing speed of DEC’s Alpha chip enabled the development of Alta Vista, the most-used early internet search engine and DEC technology was at the forefront in secure online banking and retail.
Reading Now & Future
- DEC helped create the workplace of the future - remote work
Significance of DEC
Richard Briggs reflects on the importance of DEC for Reading and for the computing industry more widely.
- AI
- Climate Change
