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.
understandable, but then we have wo1 and the old battlegrounds in Belgium and northern France are not wastelands. They do still find tons and tons of old bombs each year though farmers drive with a armor plates under there tractors and they pile up the unexploded explosives next to their field
“The Zone rouge (French for 'Red Zone') is a chain of non-contiguous areas throughout northeastern France that the French government isolated after the First World War. The land, which originally covered more than 1,200 square kilometres (460 square miles), was deemed too physically and environmentally damaged by conflict for human habitation. Rather than attempt to immediately clean up the former battlefields, the land was allowed to return to nature. Restrictions within the Zone rouge still exist today, although the control areas have been greatly reduced.
The Zone Rouge was defined just after the war as "Completely devastated. Damage to properties: 100%. Damage to Agriculture: 100%. Impossible to clean. Human life impossible".
[…]
The areas are saturated with unexploded shells (including many gas shells), grenades, and rusting ammunition. Soils were heavily polluted by lead, mercury, chlorine, arsenic, various dangerous gases, acids, and human and animal remains. The area was also littered with ammunition depots and chemical plants. The land of the Western Front is covered in old trenches and shell holes.
Each year, numerous unexploded shells are recovered from former WWI battlefields in what is known as the iron harvest. According to the Sécurité Civile, the French agency in charge of the land management of Zone rouge, 300 to 700 more years at this current rate will be needed to clean the area completely. Some experiments conducted in 2005–2006 discovered up to 300 shells per hectare (120 per acre) in the top 15 centimetres (6 inches) of soil in the worst areas. [better source needed]
Some areas still remain heavily contaminated. For example, at a site in the vicinity of Verdun known as the Place à Gaz (49.3116°N 5.5888°E), arsenic constitutes up to 176 grams per kilogram (18%) in the soil. In the 1920s, chemical warfare shells containing arsenic were destroyed there by thermal treatment.
”
maybe it takes the edge of. my city was completly destroyed by bombings. took 15 years and it was back again and germany was ok after war. I hope the best for ukraine. It is worth it
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 know that as technologists we tend to think of this as "treasure" but most other people think of it as "large metal objects that are expensive to store or landfill." Maintaining, storing, and restoring them on top of that is also very expensive. Usually they'll give them to anyone willing to take them off their hands. We only need to look at the closure of the Living Computers Museum closing [1] to see that most people do not see the value in the history of computing. That's why the CHM is doing such is important work.
In my country museums have accumulated so much paintings and historical artefacts over the last 200 years that most of the collection is sitting in climate controlled vaults.
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.
I would argue that ancient Egypt was a bit more distant to modern Egypt, than cold war germany to modern germany. My main argument is, I have memories from that time.
But in this case the answer seems simply, in germany the stuff was rotten and nobody took proper care of it anymore, so I guess it was simply sold? The article is not clear about it, but it lead with "abandoned in a warehouse".
2 pages of links on Google for the name "Prof. Dr.-Ing. Walter Ameling" - However do not know if actually same person mentioned in articale.. Some of them seem to match up .
> 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.
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.
It makes me worried for Ukraine. I fear parts of that country will just be wasteland no matter who wins.
understandable, but then we have wo1 and the old battlegrounds in Belgium and northern France are not wastelands. They do still find tons and tons of old bombs each year though farmers drive with a armor plates under there tractors and they pile up the unexploded explosives next to their field
Some parts still are wastelands. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_rouge:
“The Zone rouge (French for 'Red Zone') is a chain of non-contiguous areas throughout northeastern France that the French government isolated after the First World War. The land, which originally covered more than 1,200 square kilometres (460 square miles), was deemed too physically and environmentally damaged by conflict for human habitation. Rather than attempt to immediately clean up the former battlefields, the land was allowed to return to nature. Restrictions within the Zone rouge still exist today, although the control areas have been greatly reduced.
The Zone Rouge was defined just after the war as "Completely devastated. Damage to properties: 100%. Damage to Agriculture: 100%. Impossible to clean. Human life impossible".
[…]
The areas are saturated with unexploded shells (including many gas shells), grenades, and rusting ammunition. Soils were heavily polluted by lead, mercury, chlorine, arsenic, various dangerous gases, acids, and human and animal remains. The area was also littered with ammunition depots and chemical plants. The land of the Western Front is covered in old trenches and shell holes.
Each year, numerous unexploded shells are recovered from former WWI battlefields in what is known as the iron harvest. According to the Sécurité Civile, the French agency in charge of the land management of Zone rouge, 300 to 700 more years at this current rate will be needed to clean the area completely. Some experiments conducted in 2005–2006 discovered up to 300 shells per hectare (120 per acre) in the top 15 centimetres (6 inches) of soil in the worst areas. [better source needed]
Some areas still remain heavily contaminated. For example, at a site in the vicinity of Verdun known as the Place à Gaz (49.3116°N 5.5888°E), arsenic constitutes up to 176 grams per kilogram (18%) in the soil. In the 1920s, chemical warfare shells containing arsenic were destroyed there by thermal treatment. ”
maybe it takes the edge of. my city was completly destroyed by bombings. took 15 years and it was back again and germany was ok after war. I hope the best for ukraine. It is worth it
The writing seems odd because it’s from the BAI (Before AI) era.
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.
Yeah an old colleague told me that a decommissioned mainframe where he'd worked had reportedly been sold for scrap metal.
There is HNF in about 250 km from Aachen. Transportation there would probably be cheaper.
Sounds like SAP donated $250k to fund it.
https://www.pressebox.de/pressemitteilung/sap-ag-walldorf/co...
I know that as technologists we tend to think of this as "treasure" but most other people think of it as "large metal objects that are expensive to store or landfill." Maintaining, storing, and restoring them on top of that is also very expensive. Usually they'll give them to anyone willing to take them off their hands. We only need to look at the closure of the Living Computers Museum closing [1] to see that most people do not see the value in the history of computing. That's why the CHM is doing such is important work.
[1] https://www.geekwire.com/2024/seattles-living-computers-muse...
In my country museums have accumulated so much paintings and historical artefacts over the last 200 years that most of the collection is sitting in climate controlled vaults.
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.
Insert joke about Egyptian Mummies and British Museums here
I would argue that ancient Egypt was a bit more distant to modern Egypt, than cold war germany to modern germany. My main argument is, I have memories from that time.
But in this case the answer seems simply, in germany the stuff was rotten and nobody took proper care of it anymore, so I guess it was simply sold? The article is not clear about it, but it lead with "abandoned in a warehouse".
As a USian, I had the same thought!
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...
The people from computer history muesuem would know moew. They would have asked this info witht hte person that reported the trove too them ...
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.
Seems to be the origianl collector of equipment ...?
https://de-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Walter_Ameling_...
Seems he was owner of computer muesuem that closed in 2009 .
The next link has MUCH MORE DETAIL about the closure ...
https://de-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Computermuseum_...
https://web-archive-org.translate.goog/web/20230601221853/ht...
2 pages of links on Google for the name "Prof. Dr.-Ing. Walter Ameling" - However do not know if actually same person mentioned in articale.. Some of them seem to match up .
Ohh I wish it stayed in Europe. So I could visit and see them.
Where are the eastern bloc computers?
Sure it's older but it's not dissimilar to a gigantic warehouse full of computers (from the 80s I think) found in Dallas a few years ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-ZZkZk9QRk
Some of it went to museums too.
> 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.
The photos are amazing. What an astounding treasure trove.