If you missed your chance to experience the Atari 400 in person when it was released in 1979, don’t fret, the Living Computers: Museum + Labs has your back.
Located in Seattle, Washington and established by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen in 2006, the Museum has an extensive collection of working mainframes, minicomputers, microprocessors, and peripherals that explore technology’s evolution from the 1960s to the present day. Given the worth of the collection, you might expect to be relegated to admiring the machines from behind a glass wall. Not so. Living Computer: Museum + Labs has made their collection physically accessible to visitors to encourage interaction. In late 2016, the Museum underwent renovations to include a rotating gallery of exhibits and an exhibit that focuses on today’s technology and its cultural impact. For those of us who aren’t in Seattle, they also offer online access to some of their collection.
Editor’s Note: The museum closed in 2020.
