5 ms·

Twenty years ago I bought two core memory planes (1960's, $6K new) for $50 each. Gave one to my dad, kept the other. Astonished these hadn't inflated like art w

Twenty years ago I bought two core memory planes (1960's, $6K new) for $50 each. Gave one to my dad, kept the other. Astonished these hadn't inflated like art work.

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
For the same reason technology from the early 1900s has little artistic value... most people don’t appreciate it. Having said that, I have a nice 1960s pay phone on display and a LC Smith typewriter from the 1920s also on display. My children don’t even know what they are.
kens 6y ago
Probably because core memory was so ubiquitous in the 1960s and early 1970s, so there's a lot of supply. Almost every computer used core memory and each memory module had a stack of planes. IBM was producing literally billions of ferrite cores per year. (Of course that's not as impressive now when a gigabyte costs a few dollars.)
- m463 6y ago
  I wonder how many of these survived though? I wonder if there could be a somewhere like cuba - sort of a lost kindgom of 50's cars.
  - kens 6y ago
    There are a fair number of core memory planes floating around, both on eBay and with people I know. They were compact and made nice souvenirs when computers were scrapped, so a lot of people held onto them. As far as "lost kingdom", I've seen a bunch of core planes from Russia recently; they probably kept them in service longer.
Stratoscope 6y ago
Core memory is a beautiful thing. Here's a four kilobit (64x64) plane I bought some years ago: https://geary.smugmug.com/Computers/History/i-jb2rgF5/A https://geary.smugmug.com/Computers/History/i-jb2rgF5/A Click the image to zoom in and see the detail of these (I think hand-woven) cores.
mhh__ 6y ago
If you can get someone to say it's art then it's art. I have seen a piece of fibre optic cable cut in half proudly displayed in an art gallery (fairly prominently even). Ultimately the people who appraise this kind of stuff have no idea what it actually does or how it works, if you want to be accepted you have to speak the right shibboleths. There are some artists that have an extremely good handle on what computers mean for the world, but I'm not aware of many that would fawn over a die shot like we would probably do.
- kijiki 6y ago
  https://assets.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_2101_300062988.pdf https://assets.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_2101_300062... Unsurprisingly it was funded by Intel.
pasabagi 6y ago
To be fair, art work typically doesn't inflate much either. Unless you're very successful, it deflates almost instantly as soon as the exhibition is over. I once had somebody break into my cellar and steal an installation I'd built (a whole ton of handmade motors) for the scrap value.

Twenty years ago I bought two core memory planes (1960's, $6K new) for $50 each. Gave one to my dad, kept the other. Astonished these hadn't inflated like art work.

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago

For the same reason technology from the early 1900s has little artistic value... most people don’t appreciate it. Having said that, I have a nice 1960s pay phone on display and a LC Smith typewriter from the 1920s also on display. My children don’t even know what they are.

kens 6y ago

Probably because core memory was so ubiquitous in the 1960s and early 1970s, so there's a lot of supply. Almost every computer used core memory and each memory module had a stack of planes. IBM was producing literally billions of ferrite cores per year. (Of course that's not as impressive now when a gigabyte costs a few dollars.)

m463 6y ago
I wonder how many of these survived though? I wonder if there could be a somewhere like cuba - sort of a lost kindgom of 50's cars.
- kens 6y ago
  There are a fair number of core memory planes floating around, both on eBay and with people I know. They were compact and made nice souvenirs when computers were scrapped, so a lot of people held onto them. As far as "lost kingdom", I've seen a bunch of core planes from Russia recently; they probably kept them in service longer.

Stratoscope 6y ago

Core memory is a beautiful thing. Here's a four kilobit (64x64) plane I bought some years ago: https://geary.smugmug.com/Computers/History/i-jb2rgF5/A https://geary.smugmug.com/Computers/History/i-jb2rgF5/A Click the image to zoom in and see the detail of these (I think hand-woven) cores.

mhh__ 6y ago

If you can get someone to say it's art then it's art. I have seen a piece of fibre optic cable cut in half proudly displayed in an art gallery (fairly prominently even). Ultimately the people who appraise this kind of stuff have no idea what it actually does or how it works, if you want to be accepted you have to speak the right shibboleths. There are some artists that have an extremely good handle on what computers mean for the world, but I'm not aware of many that would fawn over a die shot like we would probably do.

kijiki 6y ago
https://assets.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_2101_300062988.pdf https://assets.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_2101_300062... Unsurprisingly it was funded by Intel.

pasabagi 6y ago

To be fair, art work typically doesn't inflate much either. Unless you're very successful, it deflates almost instantly as soon as the exhibition is over. I once had somebody break into my cellar and steal an installation I'd built (a whole ton of handmade motors) for the scrap value.