As a German I wonder why was this treasure given away to a US museum? Also what is the legal status of ownership of all this? Would have been interesting to read more about this.
It's a pretty monumental effort to transport, store, refurbish and show these massive computers. There aren't a lot of organizations even willing to put in the effort which is why most of this stuff gets landfilled or sent to the recycler. I would assume they asked around and no one else was interested.
I bet most of these were German government property at some point. Considering the time period they were produced, they were probably under security protocols as well. That doesn't just expire. You are right to wonder what the provenance and legal standing of this transfer was.
God, what an odd first paragraph... wow, how did this collection of computers, most of which are probably from 1950s onwards, survive Allied bombing of the 1940s?
Then again, it's from 2006, which probably explains the style of writing...
Edit: The HTML source indicates the article was written in 2025. With video recorded in 2006 (in glorious 360p) and uploaded to YouTube last year.
Read on to the last paragraph, I think what they meant to hint at is this:
> And about those WWII bombing raids? Midway through our work, we noticed a demolition team carefully dismantling a live 500-pound Allied bomb just 350 feet from our location. According to a local office worker, this wasn’t unusual; numerous unexploded bombs had been found on-site in the years prior, prompting evacuations in 2004.
If you live in Europe, there's a reasonable chance you've had the experience of being (or living) in the proximity of an uncovered leftover WW2 bomb at some point that needed to be defused. Because those bombs didn't all disappear in the 40s.
I'm guessing in this case that could've meant somebody could've found that entire hangar and its contents and just cleaned the "junk" out entirely.
little anecdot. I have a garden in my hometown in germany and the garden was only so cheap because it is impossible to build on it because it has wayyyy to many WWII Bombs underneath and its not economical to get rid of them.
> According to a local office worker, this wasn’t unusual; numerous unexploded bombs had been found on-site in the years prior, prompting evacuations in 2004.
Yep, this is still a regular (and mostly mundane) occurrence in Germany.
Kinda crazy if you think about it. In my home town of Cologne, if you dig anywhere you either find roman ruins or WW2 bombs. ~30 bombs last year. I've been evacuated so many times.
As a German I wonder why was this treasure given away to a US museum? Also what is the legal status of ownership of all this? Would have been interesting to read more about this.
It's a pretty monumental effort to transport, store, refurbish and show these massive computers. There aren't a lot of organizations even willing to put in the effort which is why most of this stuff gets landfilled or sent to the recycler. I would assume they asked around and no one else was interested.
Sounds like SAP donated $250k to fund it.
https://www.pressebox.de/pressemitteilung/sap-ag-walldorf/co...
I bet most of these were German government property at some point. Considering the time period they were produced, they were probably under security protocols as well. That doesn't just expire. You are right to wonder what the provenance and legal standing of this transfer was.
As a USian, I had the same thought!
God, what an odd first paragraph... wow, how did this collection of computers, most of which are probably from 1950s onwards, survive Allied bombing of the 1940s?
Then again, it's from 2006, which probably explains the style of writing...
Edit: The HTML source indicates the article was written in 2025. With video recorded in 2006 (in glorious 360p) and uploaded to YouTube last year.
Read on to the last paragraph, I think what they meant to hint at is this:
> And about those WWII bombing raids? Midway through our work, we noticed a demolition team carefully dismantling a live 500-pound Allied bomb just 350 feet from our location. According to a local office worker, this wasn’t unusual; numerous unexploded bombs had been found on-site in the years prior, prompting evacuations in 2004.
If you live in Europe, there's a reasonable chance you've had the experience of being (or living) in the proximity of an uncovered leftover WW2 bomb at some point that needed to be defused. Because those bombs didn't all disappear in the 40s.
I'm guessing in this case that could've meant somebody could've found that entire hangar and its contents and just cleaned the "junk" out entirely.
little anecdot. I have a garden in my hometown in germany and the garden was only so cheap because it is impossible to build on it because it has wayyyy to many WWII Bombs underneath and its not economical to get rid of them.
The writing seems odd because it’s from the BAI (Before AI) era.
What happened to that professor who owned it? I assume he passed away or something. Unless they just stole it? :P
Maybe give the guy a little bit of credit for the collection even if he couldn't take care of it as well as a museum.
Died in August 2010 [1], so he was still alive when this happened in August 2006.
[1] https://www.aachen-gedenkt.de/traueranzeige/profdr-ingwalter...
> According to a local office worker, this wasn’t unusual; numerous unexploded bombs had been found on-site in the years prior, prompting evacuations in 2004.
Yep, this is still a regular (and mostly mundane) occurrence in Germany.
Kinda crazy if you think about it. In my home town of Cologne, if you dig anywhere you either find roman ruins or WW2 bombs. ~30 bombs last year. I've been evacuated so many times.
I'm so sad that there's no backstory to this huge throve of old computers.
Where are all these machines from? Who owned them, and why? Why were they all there in storage, in a hangar. Would have been even more interesting.
The photos are amazing. What an astounding treasure trove.