{"id":1231,"date":"2017-03-08T13:47:13","date_gmt":"2017-03-08T18:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/?p=1231"},"modified":"2017-06-08T14:32:07","modified_gmt":"2017-06-08T19:32:07","slug":"retro-scan-at-the-computer-history-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/1231\/retro-scan-at-the-computer-history-museum","title":{"rendered":"“Retro Scan” Enshrined at the Computer History Museum"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Retro<\/a>Last week I was in San Francisco for the Game Developers Conference<\/a>, and I had a blast. I need to write more about that soon.<\/p>\n

On Friday, I took a day trip down to Mountain View to visit the Computer History Museum<\/a>, which I had not been to since 2006.<\/p>\n

Aside from not having visited since they opened their first major exhibit, I am friends with the senior curator, Dag Spicer, and it was great to finally meet him face to face. I also met up with Allan Alcorn<\/a> (creator of Pong<\/em>) there, and we wandered around enjoying the exhibits together. That too is a story for another day.<\/p>\n

\"Benj<\/a>The CHM is a wonderful place, and the exhibits are top-notch. Just brilliant. No where else can you see the first mouse, the Pong prototype, the Atari 2600 prototype, the Community Memory machine, and so many more legendary artifacts.<\/p>\n

I also love it because there are bits and pieces of my work scattered throughout the place.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

One of their exhibits on the history of search engines features a TV slideshow that borrows many slides I created for PCWorld back in 2010<\/a>. The dead giveaway is the slide that features my first ever Internet email address<\/a>, redwolf@launchpad.unc.edu. A VC&G<\/em> reader tipped me off to this years ago.<\/p>\n

I am not mad about this or anything — after all, I borrowed many of those screenshots to begin with. In fact, I find it wonderful and vindicating that parts of my slideshow ended up in a museum.<\/p>\n

After I found the slideshow, I began wandering the museum to see if they borrowed any other images from my work.<\/p>\n

When I got to the video game section, I saw the scene pictured below, and thought, “Hmm. This looks familiar<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

\"Retro<\/a><\/p>\n

“Oh yeah! They asked if they could use this a few years ago,” I thought. I had told them they didn’t need my permission, but I wondered if they gave me credit anyway.<\/p>\n

I spent the next 15 seconds scanning for a tiny print “Benj Edwards” or something like that on a placard somewhere. I couldn’t find it.<\/p>\n

Then it hit me — look closely at the very bottom of the image. That black bar stands out:<\/p>\n

\"Retro<\/a><\/p>\n

Yep, it’s the iconic VC&G<\/em> Retro Scan of the Week “tagstrip” (the origins of which can be read about here<\/a>). CHM staff actually printed it out and included it as part of the image! Holy cow, I was not expecting that.<\/p>\n

I’m hoping they did this on purpose as a convenient way to give credit and that it wasn’t a weird printing error. If so, my long-running “Retro Scan of the Week<\/a>” column is now enshrined in one of the best museums in the world.<\/p>\n

Little tips of the hat like this make sticking with this thing<\/a> worthwhile.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week I was in San Francisco for the Game Developers Conference, and I had a blast. I need to write more about that soon. On Friday, I took a day trip down to Mountain View to visit the Computer History Museum, which I had not been to since 2006. Aside from not having visited […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,13,21,27,26,9,5,10],"tags":[1470,1468,1467,1469,60,158],"class_list":["post-1231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-info-and-history","category-video-game-info-and-history","category-news-current-events","category-regular_features","category-retro-scan-of-the-week","category-retrogaming","category-vcg-announcements","category-computers","tag-al-alcorn","tag-california","tag-computer-history-museum","tag-dag-spicer","tag-retro-scan","tag-slideshow"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1231"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1290,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1231\/revisions\/1290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}