"P.S. I hate knowing that I'm bidding against Microsoft people."
LOL.
Gordon Bell was one of the founders of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in the 1960s, before Bill Gates got out of diapers. He and his wife Gwen started collecting computer antiquities when he realized that a lot of historic computer hardware, software, and documentation was going into landfills. First it was a private collection. However the Bells' tie to DEC meant that DEC competitors had problems donating material to the growing collection. So the Bell's helped to found the Computer Museum in Boston and infused the museum with their own collection.
Those artifacts have now migrated to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. There's a massive HP calculator display at the entrance to "Visible Storage" where the on-display artifacts are kept. Visible Storage encompasses less than 10% of the collection, as the museum continues to collect donations so that it can open the throttle.
Gordon Bell may now work for Microsoft (working for DEC is no longer an option), but he hardly merits being tossed off as a "Microsoft People."
Edited: 6 July 2007, 6:37 p.m.
