How to set up a Computer Museum

This article explains how I helped set up a computer museum.

I am a solicitor in private practice specialising in computer law. I feel very strongly that the contribution of the computer industry to this country’s development has not received sufficient recognition and that there ought to be a museum dedicated solely to the history of computing. I first had the idea for such a museum in 1990 when I approached Swindon Borough Council and suggested that part of the Old Town museum be used for that purpose but the suggestion fell on stony ground. I also wrote to all the local computer companies asking whether they would support this plan and got positive answers from more than half of them. I felt that Swindon was an appropriate place because of the amount of IT activity here as we had Intel, Intergraph and the headquarters of the British Computer Society here as well as a large number of local software companies. 

Undaunted, I continued to push for setting up a museum here but the main problem I had was the difficulty of getting suitable premises. There is some family history to this because my father (who was in the Royal Navy) helped develop the Fleet Air Arm Museum in Yeovilton many years ago. 

As well as trying to set up a computer museum one of my other passions was to try to get a University established in the town and when Bath University opened in Swindon I was a strong supporter of what they were doing. I never imagined that the two things that I was trying to do would inter-relate but I was delighted when Bath University offered us a home within their campus in Swindon and so the museum came into being in 2003. I set up a not for profit company limited by guarantee to run the museum (we did not have enough money, ironically, to register as a charity nor do we to this day). Initially we did not have an exhibition to put in the museum and so we invited Bletchley Park to come down and put on an exhibition of their work. We immediately ran into space constraints because, although the mock up of the Enigma encoding machine fitted easily, the mock up of the Bombe decoder, which the allies used to decode the Enigma messages, was too large to go in the room. So we put that in the reception of the building and this acted as signpost to direct visitors to the museum. The Chief Curator of the museum, Simon Webb, had worked closely with me right from the start of the proposal for a museum and he deserves the credit for most of what has happened. When we put our first exhibition of home computers on six months later, Simon's considerable collection of home computers stored at his house was moved out of there (much to the relief of his wife!). We aimed to change the exhibition every six months to encourage people to return and subsequently we had exhibitions on computers on the move, pocket calculators and computer games. The computer gaming exhibition was particularly successful and we estimate that the publicity was seen by more than 800 million people around the world. It was picked up by the BBC World News and many commercial TV channels. We learnt the hard way that some exhibitions get a lot of publicity and some exhibitions do not. 

We were lucky enough to have Sir Clive Sinclair to open our handheld computing exhibition. This was particularly appropriate because of the contribution that he had made to the development of pocket calculators in this country. Later we were contacted by Kensington Palace with a message to say that HRH Duke of Kent wished to visit. Initially, we thought that this was a hoax but his private secretary patiently explained to us that it was not and he duly visited. We had not appreciated the panoply of ceremony that is required when there is a royal visitor. We had first come to his notice when we had put on a display in the headquarters of the British Computer Society for a visit that he had made to them. 

Sadly, in 2008 Bath University left Swindon and so we had to close the museum temporarily and put the then 3000 exhibits in storage. However, in 2009 Swindon Borough Council offered us a unit in Theatre Square, Swindon. We held a launch party for the museum within 5 weekends of being given the keys. This required a considerable amount of work by the volunteers in tidying the place up, painting and preparing the displays (all done in their spare time). The museum opened to the public from the start of August 2009. Seven years later we now have 6000 exhibits (storage is a real headache for us and my garage and loft are stuffed to the gunnels). We are also accredited as a Museum by the Arts Council (accreditation means that we have met nationally agreed standards designed to give confidence to the public and funding bodies). Education has always been a key part of the Museum’s offering. We have a number of school visits and we run a very popular Children’s Computer Club on Saturday mornings and afternoons. 

It has been a humble experience to act as the Chairman of the museum. I never cease to be amazed by the commitment of our fantastic volunteers (we have never had any paid staff). When we have a success, everyone shares in it.