The Desktops of History
Compared with most museum holdings, the pieces that Mark LeBlanc collects barely qualify as old enough to be antiques, none being more than 30 years old. In the realm of personal computing, however, three decades might as well be a century or more.
"Technology is changing so fast that if we don't capture some of this material and preserve it now, it will just be gone," says the professor of computer science.
Since coming to Wheaton in 1993, LeBlanc has been collecting cast-off personal computers from friends and colleagues, making sure they are ready to boot-up and putting them on display for students for whom personal computing has always been a fact of life.
"My students often view them as strange technology," he says, "and many of the computers we have collected were being used well before they were born."
LeBlanc's collection includes early IBM machines, once-popular Atari workstations and several suitcase-sized precursors to laptops. The tiny museum also features several of Apple's first machines, including the original Macintosh, which was released 20 years ago, in January 1984, and is credited with revolutionizing desktop computing. Almost all of the pieces still work.
The earliest pieces in the collection represent a paradigm shift in computing, LeBlanc says. "In the early 70s, computers were the size of a room and users were connected to it by a terminal. People didn't understand why you would want a computer that fit on your desk." The computer museum contains the machines that changed that mindset.
While the machines may have outlived their usefulness as daily tools, LeBlanc says they play an important role in his teaching. In part, the now-obsolete computers help to give today's college students a sense of the history of personal computers. What's more, their relatively modest computing capabilities provide a good setting for students to learn the value of well-written, efficient programming, he says.
"I sometimes make my students write programs for those old machines," LeBlanc says. "If they use a silly or unnecessarily complex algorithm, then the program takes hours to produce a result, if it ever does.
"In the real world, your boss doesn't want to wait three hours or three days for a program to finish its operation," LeBlanc tells students. "That illustrates the importance of choosing the right algorithm and programming path in a way they won't forget."
One of LeBlanc's friends, computer hardware specialist Al Burns, has played a major role in keeping the elderly computers operational. Over the years, the computer museum also has provided part-time work to a number of students interested in hardware and in preserving the past.
"One of my students is looking to add a copy of Asteroids, the original computer game from the '80s, to the collection," LeBlanc says. Once the game is installed, he plans to open the college's personal computer museum to teachers and students from nearby schools. "Games are often the best way to capture kids' attention," says LeBlanc, the father of six boys, "and the same holds true for helping them learn about computers."
Ironically, LeBlanc, a programming expert who has concentrated on using computer technology to explore the human genome, doesn't consider himself to be an expert in computer hardware. Still he admits to a fascination with the machines as objects.
"I just loved the old Apple IIe's with their glowing green screens," he says, in explaining the appeal of 20-year-old computers. "Besides, there's something romantic about old things."