Treasures of Paderborn
I happened to be in Paderborn, Germany, on job-related trip. We had some free time so, apart from getting lost in this beautiful city we went to HNF: Heinz Nixdorf Museum. It is advertised as the worlds biggest computer museum.
Now, I’m not the biggest fan of computers but while browsing the museum’s webpage I found an Underwood somewhere in the background. And printing press. That was enough to justify the visit.
Boy, how surprised I was when I found the entire first floor dedicated to typewriters and office environment of that era. Magnificent!
Of course there are many German machines - we all love them, ain’t we?
Proper machines! And beautifully restored - or maintained in good condition.
There are also some monstrosities like adders, magnificent machines.
The exhibition is not limited to German machines, I found even “my” Remington!
… and my Siemag!
Office furniture - something I’m still hunting:
Early ideas on portable typewriters ;)
Further I went more interesting it was becoming.
Seeing Elliott-Fisher book-writer “in flesh” was thrilling:
Book-writer cannot exist in such a collection without music-writers. I found Melotype (opening this post) and Olympia Musicwriter!
Going back in time - there is a great collection of really old machines.
Yes, there is Lambert, too!
No such collection can be complete without Sholes & Glidden. There are two!
Very early prototype of wooden machine, typeface consisting of dots instead of type slugs:
Biggest surprise for me was to see how small and beautiful is Williams, here Williams no.1.
So there you go: visiting computer museum can make you a surprise. In fact the museum is considering “computer” in much broader sense than we tend to think about it today. The exposition shows mechanization of information, from early typing machines, through typewriters until today’s digital processing.
Mechanical crank-heads like me will be occupied on two floors, looking onto ingenious ways humans used to store and to process words, numbers, thoughts and music.
Very worth visiting!