Living Computers Museum to Close Permanently

It’s a sad day for computer enthusiasts the world over, as the Living Computers Museum + Labs in Seattle has announced it’s closing for good and will never reopen. The museum previously shut down due to COVID-19, and it’s now been confirmed it will not reopen. The museum was started 12 years ago by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who passed away from cancer in 2018 at the young age of 65.
As far as we can tell, no official reason was given for shuttering the museum, but the Allen estate confirmed the closure in a statement to Geekwire. As proof of the museum’s demise, its social media accounts were taken offline on Tuesday, and the website is no longer functional. Using the Wayback Machine, a previously posted message said the museum was being shut down due to the pandemic since it relied on “public gatherings and special events” to operate. The museum served as a showcase for vintage computing technology and included a variety of interactive displays.
Now that the museum is closed and Allen has unfortunately passed on, some of his more notable belongings will be auctioned off later this year, with the proceeds going to charity. Items that will be up for auction include some of the computing gear found in the museum and extremely rare items such as a letter from Einstein to President Truman that many consider to be the impetus for the Manhattan Project. If you’re into room-sized computers, there’s also a DEC PDP-10: KI-10 up for auction, noted as the first computer Allen and Bill Gates used before founding Microsoft. It’s projected to sell for $30,000 to $50,000, or roughly the cost of a single Nvidia H100 GPU.
Despite the estate saying the shuttering of the museum and selling its contents to benefit charities are aligned with Mr. Allen’s wishes, not everyone believes that to be the case. Geekwire notes how odd it seems that Mr. Allen would spend so much time and energy creating and expanding the museum only for it to be dismantled and sold off at auction. The site points to a quote from the museum’s founding by Paul Allen, stating that the museum’s goal was to ensure the technology and experiences found within would never be “lost to time.” Mr. Allen also owned several Seattle institutions that were recently sold and purchased by new owners, leaving folks to question why the museum wouldn’t just be sold or given away to an enthusiastic new owner instead of being shut down permanently.
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