The Milwaukee Public Museum had public quiz stations installed way back in the 1970s. They were the work of Dr. Screvin, a fascinating pioneer in museum audience evaluation.
The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago had a series of interactive games throughout the museum back in maybe the 1980s. Kids lined up to use them and they weren't simplistic - some had to do with the economics of an artificial community. The Museum of Science and Industry also commissioned a study of these kinds of interactives back then as well. Oh ... and in about 1990, the Indianapolis Children's Museum developed a series of games, one of which was a racing game (Indianapolis 500 tie-in?) which were designed and programmed by in-house staff, including this incredibly bright kid from the U of Chicago, Charlie Barrows. On a tangent, there was a speaker at the summer seminar on hand-helds that the Museums Association in the UK held this year at the Tate Modern who had pretty thoroughly researched the use of "portable" narrative sound gallery guides, starting way back in the 1950s? in Sweden and gave a wonderful presentation that included film of people using these systems. There were 250-300 people in attendance including, oh, maybe 5 people from North America. BTW, Willoughby maintains an extensive library of several thousand books, publications, unpublished manuscripts, bibliographies, informatics studies, defunct newsletters, and articles on museums and computers as well as on early computing reaching back to the projects in Oklahoma and Missouri that were started in the 1960s. -----Original Message----- From: mcn-l-bounces at mcn.edu [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Suzanne Quigley Sent: Monday, December 18, 2006 2:27 PM To: Museum Computer Network Listserv Subject: Re: [MCN-L] History of Museum Gaming? Hi Richard, I think I have a fairly complete file of all the Spectra issues in paper going back to the beginning. If you know what issue(s) might have your info - let me know, I will scan and send... But I don't have the time to dig through them for references until February, I believe we had an archivist at one point in time - Does anyone remember who? Someone at the SI? There should be another complete set there. The first Museum to have a website? Good question. I remember the first collections to have images tied to their databases - back in the early 80's - the Eastman House Museum in Rochester New York and the Helen Allen Textile Collection at UW-Madison (WI). We were all envious at the first public kiosks - National Gallery London and Seattle Art Museum spring to mind - although it was a hot time for that and there were likely others. Suzanne Quigley art & artifact services 917 676 9039 squigle at panix.com www.suzannequigley.com On Dec 18, 2006, at 3:13 PM, <rjurban at uiuc.edu> wrote: > This message is a request to all those wise souls who have been > around for a while. > > We've had the conversation about "who was the first museum to have > a web site." Here's mine. Do we know who was the first museum to > install public computers for the purpose of gaming/ virtual > environments (text-based, 2d, 3d, whatever)? > > I would gladly reimurse copying fees for anyone in possesion of > pre-1990s Spectra articles on the topic. > > Cheers, > > Richard Urban, Doctoral Student > Graduate School of Library and Information Science > University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign > rjurban at uiuc.edu > http://www.inherentvice.net > > > _______________________________________________ > You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum > Computer Network (http://www.mcn.edu) > > To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l at mcn.edu > > To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: > http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer Network (http://www.mcn.edu) To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l at mcn.edu To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l
