You going to send all that stuff to the smithonian for display some day? Would fill a whole building.
You going to send all that stuff to the smithonian for display some day? Would fill a whole building.
I figure about 15,000 square feet, the same as used for exhibits at the Computer History Museum. More to include corporate displays of medical, measuring, and material processing applications plus holography and performance theater. I see this tube as about the first thing people would see. In the lobby. Smithsonian? Museum of Science & Industry? It will need deep pockets to get started wherever it goes.
The Smithsonian would probably put all but a few pieces of your collection into their warehouse, where it would never see the light of day ever again. Seriously, they have easily an order of magnitude more items in storage than they have on display.
If the goal is to get the entire collection on display, my suggestion would be to find a smaller, regional museum that would be willing to host a specialized "laser wing" somewhere in the building. Charles Townes was from Greenville, SC, and Theodore Maiman was from Los Angeles, so those might be places to start...
Adam
I have a thought.....The Rock Hall of Fame. Since lasers were and are such a part of the performance maybe they want to do a laser display section. It's right here in town and the science center is next door.
A science center is probably going to be your best bet. You might have to "shop around" to find one that may be looking into expanding or setting up a physics wing. I can probably guarantee that not all of your pieces are going to be displayed, no matter where you send them. The only way to ensure that would be to open your own museum or donate (benefactor) an entire wing to an existing museum with a stipulation that everything be displayed.
After trying to get show projector #1 into the Smithsonian...
Here is what I think of them. IF they will even have their "Evaluation Contractors" talk to you at all...
https://youtu.be/FRP0MBNoieY?t=62
Steve
Qui habet Christos, habet Vitam!
I should have rented the space under my name for advertising.
When I still could have...
Wait... I thought that was Brad's garage
I've been in contact with the Smithsonian's Associate Curator who collects laser related things and he definitely wants this group. I designed a display viewing system for the first hologram for him a few years ago when they wanted to display it. They have very little when it comes to lasers. A few milestone pieces but nothing they could build an exhibit around.
A temporary show may be the best approach to get things going, and gauge general public interest. Something that could run 3 to 6 months in a large city.
Yeah, that's pretty much what I was thinking, Steve!
"He definitely wants it", as in he just wants your collection, or he wants it because he has a plan to display it? Because the two goals are very different...
I had the chance to speak with a few people who were granted access to the Smithsonian archives for research. By their accounts, the stuff the Museum has in storage is absolutely amazing and is on a scale that is orders of magnitude larger than what you see on display. (Steve's video from "Raiders of the Lost Ark" is not too far off from their descriptions.) Sadly though, unless you are a researcher (and on the approved list), you'll never see any of those things in storage.
They did something like this in Columbia, SC at the Science Museum a while back. They had a small "laser wing" set up for several months and they had a few cool things in there. Nothing nearly as comprehensive as your collection, of course, but they had a few interactive exhibits in addition to some static displays, and they got the basic science right, so given the small size of the city and the undoubtedly small budget they had I felt it was a decent attempt. (Dkumpula, SaltyRobot, SaltyDog, myself, and a few others all met there and hung out for an afternoon several years ago when they did this, so maybe one of them can share their thoughts.)A temporary show may be the best approach to get things going, and gauge general public interest. Something that could run 3 to 6 months in a large city.
One item that really caught my eye though was one of the Schneider ShowLaser units from JenLas. To the best of my knowledge, there were only 11 of those that were ever imported into the USA, so it was a rare find indeed. (Not operational, sadly, but it was still cool to see it sitting there.) No idea what happened to that unit after they took the exhibit down... (For those keeping score, I've now seen three of those alleged 11 initial units.)
Anyway, I'm sure you could prepare something similar to this exhibit with select items from your collection (accompanied by expository prose written by you), so long as a museum was willing to pay for the remodeling/construction costs and maybe spring for some extra equipment to provide some interactive attractions to draw folks into the wing. But it would have to be a labor of love, because absent a big grant from your rich uncle there isn't going to be any money in it...
Adam