The Bugbook Historical Microcomputer Museum was a small display of several hundred key items from the collection of computer hobbyist David G. Larsen. The Museum was developed and maintained by the LCF Group (David & Gaynell Larsen and Dee Wallace) in

Floyd, Virginia Floyd is a town in Floyd County, Virginia, United States. The population was 425 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Floyd County. The Town of Floyd was originally named Jacksonville as the surrounding county was formed during the tenur ...

from 2008-2016. The name of the museum comes from the Bugbooks and Blacksburg Continuing Education Books a, a series of instructional books created by the "Blacksburg Group" during the late 1970s & 80's. David was a part of the group. The museum closed in May 2016 and Larsen donated the majority of his collection to the

Computer Museum of America The Computer Museum of America was established in Roswell, Georgia and opened in July 2019 to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the Moon landing. It is the largest technology museum on the East Coast East Coast may refer to: Entertainme ...

Roswell, Georgia Roswell is a city in northern Fulton County, Georgia, United States. At the official 2010 census, the city had a population of 88,346. The 2020 estimated population was 94,884, making Roswell the state's ninth largest city. A close suburb of Atla ...

History

The museum curator, David Larsen, collected computer artifacts and memorabilia for over forty years. He was interested in electronics at an early age and had his start in computers in 1957 with a Navy assignment at

Remington Rand Remington Rand was an early American business machine manufacturer, originally a typewriter manufacturer and in a later incarnation the manufacturer of the UNIVAC line of mainframe computers. Formed in 1927 following a merger, Remington Rand w ...

UNIVAC UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) was a line of electronic digital stored-program computers starting with the products of the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation. Later the name was applied to a division of the Remington Rand company and ...

St. Paul Paul; grc, Παῦλος, translit=Paulos; cop, ⲡⲁⲩⲗⲟⲥ; hbo, פאולוס השליח (previously called Saul of Tarsus;; ar, بولس الطرسوسي; grc, Σαῦλος Ταρσεύς, Saũlos Tarseús; tr, Tarsuslu Pavlus; ...

. His entire career has involved electronics and

microcomputer A microcomputer is a small, relatively inexpensive computer having a central processing unit (CPU) made out of a microprocessor. The computer also includes memory and input/output (I/O) circuitry together mounted on a printed circuit board (P ...

s. This includes thirty one years as a

Virginia Tech Virginia Tech (formally the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and informally VT, or VPI) is a Public university, public Land-grant college, land-grant research university with its main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. It also ...

faculty member teaching

instrumentation Instrumentation a collective term for measuring instruments that are used for indicating, measuring and recording physical quantities. The term has its origins in the art and science of scientific instrument-making. Instrumentation can refer to ...

and automation. He is also an

amateur radio operator An amateur radio operator is someone who uses equipment at an amateur radio station to engage in two-way personal communications with other amateur operators on radio frequencies assigned to the amateur radio service. Amateur radio operators ...

and has been for six decades.

Significant collection items

The museum itself was focused on the period from 1971-1981 when personal computers were first in production. Among the items that the museum featured were: *

Apple I The Apple Computer 1, originally released as the Apple Computer and known later as the Apple I or Apple-1, is an 8-bit desktop computer released by the Apple Computer Company (now Apple Inc.) in 1976. It was designed by Steve Wozniak. The idea ...

exact operational clone on display and four original Apple-1 computers in collection shown by special request. *

Mark-8 The Mark-8 is a microcomputer design from 1974, based on the Intel 8008 CPU (which was the world's first 8-bit microprocessor). The Mark-8 was designed by Jonathan Titus, a Virginia Tech graduate student in Chemistry. After building the machine, ...

Altair 8800 The Altair 8800 is a microcomputer designed in 1974 by MITS and based on the Intel 8080 CPU. Interest grew quickly after it was featured on the cover of the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics and was sold by mail order through advertisemen ...

low serial number #21 * Commodore 64

References

External links

*{{Official website, http://www.microcomputermuseum.com/ Computer museums in the United States Defunct museums in Virginia Museums disestablished in 2016

History

Significant collection items

See also

References

External links