- [Narrator] Coming up, we'll visit a place where old technology is embraced, where old discarded computers have taken on a new purpose, and look behind the scenes at a collection so complete, it's where Hollywood comes looking for props.

Then later, a catboat and a first-order Fresnel lens are just a few of the pieces on exhibit at the Martha's Vineyard Museum.

This is "Treasures Inside the Museum."

(inspiring music) (inspiring music continues) (inspiring music continues) (inquisitive music) This is the Rhode Island Computer Museum, and little, if anything, here is new.

In the last 100 years, few things have had greater impact on our daily lives than computers.

They have transformed communication, education, healthcare, entertainment, and commerce.

They've made us more efficient, more productive, and given us new ways to play games, and you can explore all of that right here.

- We're one of the few museums, computer museums that actually has operational machines, most of them put them behind glass cases.

We think people need to interact with them 'cause it's a rather unique experience to actually operate a 50- or 60-year-old computer.

- I truly believe it is for everyone.

People who are looking to the past, people who are looking to the future, people who, frankly, don't even like the digital age, who, they can still go and be interested, inspired, and take sort of what they know about what's around us.

You can't avoid it.

You may not like it, but you can't avoid it, so learn about it and then take it into your life and see where you wanna go with it.

- [Narrator] Mostly what you'll see here is the evolution of technology, from the very big and very slow machines to the super fast microcomputers.

- We like to talk about this as there's a tree trunk and then there's all these branches, and the tree trunk is all these old computers that they start out, and they've branched into all the microcomputers and other things that people have.

Other electronic products.

- For the history buffs, they may see old computers that either they will remember or that have sort of a historic significance in, honestly, we live in a digital age.

Everything we touch is computers now.

See where it all started.

For people who just, you know, are roughly my age, there are the computer games.

The key thing about the Rhode Island Computer Museum is as much as possible, our computers work, so you're not just looking at stuff and you're not looking at it behind glass.

You're playing with it and interacting with it.

So, you can play, you know, original "Frogger" or Atari, or all those things we thought we'd lost, so it's very interactive and it's great for adults to connect with their kids.

You'd be amazed at the memories that come up as a child is starting to play with an Atari and, you know, their parent can be like, "Ah, I remember, you know, the Christmas I got this, and here, let me show you a trick," so that's really fun as well.

- [Narrator] While today, we think of this type of technology emerging mostly from Silicon Valley in California, a lot of these early machines were developed in the Northeast.

- A lot of these computers were outgrowth from MIT and Harvard, where they had a lot of money for research and it started, really, in the '40s, really blossomed in the '50s, and you ended up with a lot of computer companies that were all spinoffs of spinoffs of spinoffs that were all in this area because this is where the universities were and this is where all the tech was.

Eventually, the money and the bright people ended up moving to California to Silicon Valley, and all of the tech that used to be in this area ended up moving to the Silicon Valley.

It's really unfortunate that there's, you know, virtually nothing left for the computer industry in this area anymore, but there are, Massachusetts was a huge area for computer research.

PerkinElmer was in Connecticut.

There were a few companies in Rhode Island that were making peripherals for computers, including one of my next-door neighbors, but this was, you know, in the '60s, '70s, '80s, this was just booming for the computer industry here.

- [Narrator] There are examples of very early computers here: machines that help us to understand how the technology works at a very basic level.

- Computers being electrical instruments basically have only two options.

They can be on or they can be off like any electrical switch, and in one of the programs we do, we talk about essentially the most simple electrical equipment we have, like a flashlight that can either be on or off, and that's actually binary.

It's two states.

It's either on, which, for computer binary, would be a one, or it's off, zero, and that's how they can communicate.

Now, if you only have one.

In one of our classes, we actually have kids try to communicate with each other using only the flashlight on/off as code, and you can do some really simple things, like you could answer a yes/no question maybe, but not a whole lot more than that.

But then if you start to add more flashlights together, you know, you could have more options, both off, option one, one on, one off for this one, both on, or, you know, a different on/off, so already you've gone from, like, two options, on/off, to four options, and then if you have all a whole bunch of these stacked in a row, again, it increases significantly, and that's sort of what these computers are showing, that this computer has in the front these toggle switches.

They can be on or off, and then you have a whole bunch of them together so that you have more options.

Later, it was actually hooked up to this keyboard that gave you a whole different set of options, but you can see how it was originally done, and this one as well was actually 8-bit, not that that's necessarily gonna make a lot of sense, but it just means that you have three options of on/off/on and so on, and that was how this computer was originally programmed.

(inquisitive music) (inquisitive music continues) - [Narrator] The museum exhibits a series of desktop computers running on different platforms and different operating systems.

The 1980s and 1990s are well represented here, but you'll also find much older and much larger machines.

(tranquil music) - This computer is a PDP-11/45.

It was installed in the fire department in Brooklyn and it was the interface between the red fire pull boxes that you would find in a building or on a telephone pole on a street and the 9-1-1 system, so it would get a digital message.

Each of the pull boxes has a serial number associated with it, and that gets sent to the PDP-11, and it would look up the pull box number and get the address and then upload the address into the 9-1-1 system, and that machine was actually active during 9/11.

(tranquil music) So, this is a smaller version of the one that was installed in Brooklyn.

It's also a PDP-11, so the same family.

These are disc drives here and here and diskette drives on it.

This particular machine has multiple boards in it that are about 18 inches by a foot that make up the CPU, and you can actually point to chips on there and say, "This is doing the math, this is moving data, this is controlling the cycles of the machine," and on a modern machine, if you're running Windows or something, you can't stop the machine from running without, you know, just restarting it.

They don't tolerate that.

On these machines, you can actually stop them and run a single instruction at a time using the control panel that's on it, so you can use it for debugging, but you can also use it for explaining to somebody exactly what the machine is doing.

(inquisitive music) - [Narrator] There's a space at the museum dedicated to video games that visitors can try their skills at and a classroom where students can learn to assemble from small kits.

There's even a maker space, where the more ambitious visitors can build from scratch.

Beyond the exhibit space, they also maintain a cavernous warehouse, where you can find almost any kind of computer or data processor.

- This is one of our treasures that was donated to us and it's an analog computer, which means that it has tubes in it.

So, if you look in the back of this, you'll find all kinds of tubes, and those are vacuum tubes.

A vacuum tube is just a big switch, it's just another form of a switch, but these switches heat up quite a bit, and when they heat up, they burn out.

This is a different way of looking at technology and computers that are normal.

So, you have a bunch of switches here, but mainly what we're talking about is the types of waveform that you have.

So, to not get into too much details, people probably remember what a sine wave is, so if you looked on the screen, you'd have a sine wave.

On other computers, on digital computers, they're square waves, so they go up and down like this.

So, this computer allows us to do things like study spring action, so if you had a car or a suspension system, you could study how the spring would work on a car in a suspension system, so that's why this one's kinda unique, and plus that, it has really cool names on it.

So, dead zone, and I think that this part of it, first-order electronics, I think those things, first-order lag, is really interesting.

And of course, the movie companies come and love things like this.

- [Narrator] For production companies looking to recreate a period in time or building a science fiction set, this collection has been invaluable.

- One of the things that we are very proud of is all the movies that we've had the pieces of equipment come in, such as "Mad Men," "Maniac," "Halt and Catch Fire," "King Kong: Skull Island" for some reason, and then this one was "Discovery."

We also were in the show "Severance," and "Severance" is new, and also "Fallout," so we're very happy about that.

What happens is the set designers will come here and if I'm very lucky, I'll get 'em to walk through the warehouse, and once they walk through the warehouse, they'll say, "I want that, I want that, I want that," and we'll rent all these pieces to 'em.

Sometimes it's good.

The pieces come back clean as they leave dirty.

Other times, sometimes it's a little rough on some of the pieces, so if you have computer terminals or monitors, sometimes they'll break pieces of plastic.

This is old plastic.

So, we usually don't rent anything that's very valuable, but we rent things that we have duplicates of.

I'm sitting at the control panel for our Data General console that came from Harvard University.

We got a call from Harvard University and they said they were getting rid of their CAT scan machine and would we like their computers that controlled it, and we said certainly.

So, we hopped in our truck and we went up there, and when we got there, they were all out in little white bunny suits with Geiger counter, saying, "Oh, this piece is too hot.

You can't have this piece, but you can have this one," and so you see here the console and we're very proud of this console that we have, and it's been in a lot of movies.

So, one of the movies was a Robert Redford movie, and I just was so unfortunate that I didn't get him to sign this console, but it was called "Discovery," and it was filmed in Newport, Rhode Island.

So, "Discovery" was a science fiction show and they just loved this console, but to get this console out of the warehouse was difficult for 'em, and to get it into the mansion that they filmed in Newport was even more difficult, but we're very happy to say that if you look at the movie, you'll see our piece being presently displayed.

- [Narrator] From the motion picture industry to a hands-on interactive museum, everyone here is committed to preserving computer science, with an eye on inspiring the next generation.

(relaxed music) (spirited music) (waves rumble) Since 1799, a lighthouse has stood above the cliffs at the western end of Martha's Vineyard, guiding ship traffic through the treacherous waters below.

The stories around this lighthouse are an important part of the island's history.

It's why the first-order Fresnel lens that sat in this tower from 1856 to 1952 now is on permanent display at the Martha's Vineyard Museum.

(inquisitive music) - The Fresnel lens is like an engineering marvel.

You can see its light many miles out to sea.

This very lens actually was first shown at the Paris Exposition in Paris, France before the United States government brought it and moved it here and installed it in the Gay Head Light.

It's very rare for this kind of lens to have survived.

People love it.

They come in and they just have a feeling for it.

It's beautiful.

It's sort of a work of art, it's a work of science, and it's sort of just so important to the history of the island that I think that those things combined make it a real treasure.

- [Narrator] Today, the 12-foot-tall lens has been restored and is protected inside a special gallery where museum staff can care for it as needed.

The more than 1000 individual pieces of glass require dusting.

That involves one person climbing inside the lens and working in tandem with a partner outside.

(graceful music) The maintenance procedure finishes with a hand crank, turning the one-and-a-half-ton glass lens a quarter turn.

- [Bonnie] And that's all it takes as long as we take care of it.

- [Narrator] The connection to the sea is a common theme at the Martha's Vineyard Museum.

There is an exhibit that recalls shipwrecks and another that examines whaling logbooks.

- This is an exhibition that features just a small handful of the more than 120 whaling logbooks and journals that we have in our collection, and the focus of this exhibit is really to look at the art that is found within the pages of these logbooks and journals.

(solemn music) We chose these two logs because they are among the most exceptional visually in our collection.

The iris on the right here really kind of takes you into both the kind of fantasy of what a whaling voyage might look like with whales everywhere and, you know, whales tied up to the ship and, you know, there's more oil than you know what to do with, and also the dangers of a whaling voyage.

So, once you have harpooned that whale who is not happy with what is going on, and the crew are out on whale boats and the whale overturns one of the whale boats and the crew is in the water.

On the other hand, the Alexander Barclay and the Charles W. Morgan has a little bit more of a whimsical, a little bit more of a whimsical spirit to it, but as you can see on this page here, one of the most sort of visually arresting in almost, like, this abstract art way is this whale tail here with another inside it.

You've got some birds here, but one of my favorite images in the entire book are a series of right whale paintings that were done.

I'll actually stop right here and focus.

This is one that actually shows a really beautiful and sad ending for one right whale here at the hands of two crews that have gone out in the whale boats.

But at the very end of this book, there are a couple of small paintings of right whales that are done almost in a loving way and a very beautiful, I'd like to say almost sensitive way of someone who really understands the biology of a right whale, and even the little steam coming from the blowhole of the right whale almost looks like a little heart, and I've always been struck by this because it feels like in so many ways, you know, to be a good whaler, you have to sort of distance yourself from these creatures.

You know, they're just a source of income for you, but this drawing has always made me stop and think about really what this person who's creating this art, for no reason other than to create it, what they're really thinking about these whales.

(sullen music) (sullen music continues) (sullen music continues) - [Narrator] In addition to the logbooks, there are other examples of where whaling intersected with art, like scrimshaw and this painting.

(sullen music) - Paintings of sea captains were common on the vineyard in the 19th century.

Along with building a big house, it was the one of the ways you showed the world that you were successful at your job, that you'd arrived, that you'd made it.

What we're looking at is a portrait Captain Thomas Wirth of Edgartown.

He had it painted before he left on his first voyage as captain going whaling in the Pacific in the Globe.

Unfortunately, mutiny broke out in the Globe after they left Hawaii bound for the coast of Japan.

Captain Wirth and the three mates were all murdered in their cabins, and the ship was stolen by a dissident member of the crew, who sailed it away to the Mulgrave Islands in the South Pacific.

The mutiny didn't go as planned.

Most of the mutineers ultimately wound up dead, killed by the Mulgrave islanders, and only about half the crew made it back safely to Martha's Vineyard and their home ports.

We have many portraits like this, but because this portrait is the only trace we have of Captain Wirth himself beyond bare records in the town archives that say he was born, he was married, it's remarkable in that it lets us put a face on the leading victim of what's still remembered as the most brutal mutiny in the history of American whaling.

(sullen music) - [Narrator] In 2019, the demands of a growing collection led to the museum relocating to its current location on the site of a former marine hospital, but before moving in, in a site excavation revealed evidence of Indigenous people living here 5,000 years ago.

Those items are now a part of an exhibit that also includes more recent pieces from the building's history.

(inspiring music) (inspiring music continues) (inspiring music continues) - This particular piece was found by a fisherman, a lobster fisherman, I believe, and I think it either came up in one of his traps or when he was working, and he gave it to the museum last year.

This piece is a bottle that was found in somebody's garden when they were digging, and this also says U.S.

Marine Hospital Service on it.

It's a little bit harder to read because it has all of the damage that's done when something has been underground for a really long time.

These bottles were made for marine hospitals all over the country, but then they were sent here with the medicine in them.

It's important to understand the long history of this place.

I think, often, people are, you know, they're focused on the present, which is good.

We collect from the present day as well as things in the past, but I think that when you have an understanding of the deep history of this place, that it goes, this place, not just this island, but this spot that we are on, one of my hopes is that, you know, people will think, "Huh, well, how does this affect me?"

whether they're going back to their home off-island and they start thinking about their own local history or whether they're here and they're kind of like, "Wow, if there are things that are 5,000 years old that were found there, I wonder how, you know, where I live, how that works.

You know, what's there?"

and so I think that that's one of the things that I always hope is that what we do here will inspire people to think about their lives when they're not here and that they'll keep coming back to get more pieces of the story because we change the exhibitions a lot, and so I think that that's one of the things that we do well here and that I really hope that people, you know, will kind of, it'll give 'em some perspective on their life and on the world, even.

(spirited music) (spirited music continues) - [Narrator] Another way that the museum gives people perspective is by maintaining and sharing Vanity.

- So, this is the Vanity.

She was built in 1929 for islanders who were fishermen.

- Scalloping mostly in Edgartown.

She was built in Edgartown, lived in Edgartown all her life.

Still lives in Edgartown.

- It's known as a catboat, which are mostly New England and Southern New England, but they're good for getting into shallow water, and they have one big sail so it's a fairly simple boat to sail.

You haul that one sail up and off you go.

- [Narrator] Wooden catboats like this were once plentiful in New England waters, but today can be hard to come by.

After serving two generations of local fishermen, Vanity was donated to the museum, where the first order of business was a complete restoration.

- We reframed most of the boat.

The frames are the ribs, the skeleton of the boat.

We've replaced the keel, the centerboard trunk.

I think the stem is new.

The transom, which is the back end.

New deck and most of the interior, so, and new cockpit, so pretty much everything.

- [Narrator] Now, Vanity serves as a sort of goodwill ambassador, taking friends of the museum out for summertime sails around the island.

- It sails beautifully.

I've sailed a lot of little boats and this one practically sails itself.

- [Narrator] A living history: one of the many stories waiting to be discovered at the Martha's Vineyard Museum.

(spirited music) (spirited music continues) (spirited music continues) (triumphant music) (lively music)