She blinded me with science

I never am really satisfied that I understand anything; because, understand it well as I may, my comprehension can only be an infinitesimal fraction of all I want to understand about the many connections and relations which occur to me, how the matter in question was first thought of or arrived at, etc., etc.

Ada Lovelace

I went to InfoAge without high expectations, but left highly impressed. My family took a trip to this volunteer run museum because it was located in Camp Evans, where my father used to work, and he'd been told that his photo was somewhere in one of the exhibits. I imagined it would have a few kiddie exhibitions and a couple of pictures on a wall. Instead, I found something with a fascinating look at both the history of this camp, the technology it was involved with, and a few other really cool exhibits.

Camp Evans, located in Wall, started out as the station where Marconi did some pioneering work with radio broadcasting. It was later used by Fort Monmouth for numerous projects, such as the world's first portable computer (assuming your definition of portable includes "fits on a 30-foot truck").

What made this place extra enjoyable were the volunteers. They were all deeply knowledgeable, and willing to go into great depth. It's one thing to look at some old china plates and think how nice they look. It's another to look at some old china plates and be told the story of how they lay beneath the sea for over a century, until some spear fishermen realized that what they though were rocks were actually slats from a shipwreck, and while the crates the dishes were stored in had been eaten away, they were still protected by the straw they were packed in.

A few of the many highlights for me:

1) Seeing a picture of Max Adler, the man who gave me Bar Mitzvah lessons, in the Camp Evans hall of fame. (For personal reasons, obviously.)

2) Seeing some of the complex looking radar devices from World War 2. Tracking enemy planes was not just a matter of looking at dots on a screen. There were tons of complex calibrations necessary. For contrast, the exhibit also showed a working modern radar gun simple enough for children, and available in toy stores.

3) The fallout shelter at the camp, which has been turned into an exhibit on fallout shelters. I could probably give this section its own post, but I'll limit myself to pointing out how cool some of the items it showed are. There were posters advertising the shelters, tins of crackers and candies (which were called "carbohydrate supplements" and the volunteer told us were carcinogenic), geiger counters, and other helpful tools for families worried about the a-bomb.

They also showed us the opening credits to this video, prepared to help children in 1951:

4) Hearing about the ship wrecks off the coast of the Jersey Shore. Again, a guided tour of the artifacts uncovered from the deep really brought them to life.

5) A tour of vintage computers by members of MARCH, the MidAtlantic Retro Compuing Hobbyists. MARCH believes that not only should you see old computers, but when possible you should see them in action. They had working classics such as an original Macintosh, a tricked out Commodore 64 with two floppy drives and a 300 baud modem*, and a TRS-80. I used the TRS to write my first BASIC program since about 1994. I kept it very simple:

10 PRINT "HELLO"

I thought about adding 20 GOTO 10, but didn't see where the break key was on the keyboard. (The only hard part about writing this was the keyboard was strange. The quotes were above the number 2, not left of the "enter" key, and the "enter" was where the backspace is.)


* For people who don't know about computers, this is the equivalent of a sports car that's been modified to go from zero to 60 in a tenth of a second and shoot laser beams.

That tour also showed us some older computers, including the refrigerator-sized tape drive of a Univac. (They're planning to expand soon, and will show the entire Univac, which takes up a full wall). Another, smaller, one was literally a typewriter hooked up to a TV:

6) A tour of radio and audio exhibits. Highlights included numerous demonstrations. Like the radar, old fashioned radios were not simple to tune -- there were three or four knobs involved. However, a lot of them were really beautiful. We also saw plenty of recording mediums, from CDs all the way back to phonographs with cylinders. This still works, and they played songs on it for us:

Most of the exhibits sound as though they're only half finished. InfoAge is preparing numerous expansions, and I think I'll check back on this place in a few months and see what progress has been made.