Computer Museum

I stumbled across a rather good computer museum while in Paris, at the top of the Grande Arche of all places. It had a great collection of vintage gear. Here are a few of the more interesting images of some classic computing paraphenalia. You can see the whole gallery here.

The Apple IIc, designed by frog design, where I work, back in the day

A rather interesting leather-wrapped one designed to mimic a briefcase, for the high-powered executive looking to lug around 20 pounds of gear

Ah, the Sinclair ZX81, which I learned to program in BASIC on. Very cheap, very slow, very little memory (1 kilobyte of RAM, no hard drive), but actually quite innovative in many ways.

The “Trash 80” from Radio Shack. Back when Radio Shack was a computing super-power…

No idea what these buttons do, but they look cool

A recreated “typical” teenage computer geek bedroom, circa 1982

I’m not sure that “Environment of exploitation” means the same thing in French as it does in English, but it is humorously apropos for Microsoft

A Cray Super Computer in stylish green vinyl. When it’s cold in the winter, you can sit on its warming bench.

Lastly, some switches on an old piece of equipment

Paris Arches

There are two iconic arches in Paris, the Arc de Triomphe is very well known, the Grande Arche at La Défense perhaps less so. The Arc is at the center of Paris, and La Defense is on the western outskirts, however they are connected in a straight line and face one another directly, which is a pretty cool piece of urban planning. Here are a few pictures of each.

The Arc de Triomphe

Looking up inside the Arc

The Grande Arche at La Defénse

 The vertigo-inducing glass elevators go up the structure hanging down in the middle  You can see the Arc de Triomphe in the distance Looking up at the canopy inside the ArcheIt’s really huge. Actually two office blocks connected by a bridge.  Check out my whole Paris gallery

Public Bicycles in Paris

There was a definite up-tick in bicycle usage in Paris that I noticed on this visit compared to a few years ago. High gas prices have probably contributed to that - gas is $10/gallon equivalent there, so quit complaining about $4. But also the mayor of Paris has instituted a fantastic bicycle rental system called the Velib.

It works like this:

Stocks of bicycles are placed all over Paris at special rack stations.

You walk up to the touchscreen kiosk and register (placing a 150 Euro/$225 deposit on your credit card in case you don’t return the bike). You can buy daily, monthly or yearly subscriptions. There are additional fees per hour of using the bike. For the first 30 minutes it’s free, it’s 1 euro for the next 30 mins, and then the fees going up very steeply after that. So the pricing scheme is heavily biased toward short “rentals” and rides rather than keeping it for the day.

The kiosk lets you register, pay, and has a map

The bikes themselves are custom-made and are very cool looking in a retro way. All curvy and brownish-gray they are extremely size adjustable so they fit lots of people. They have generous splash guards, a basket, dynamo-powered head and tail lights, internal-hub gearing (so no delicate derailleurs to break or maintain) and cable locks for quick locking up. Because of their distinctive looks no-one is going to steal one and claim it belongs to them. Supposedly they are impossible to maintain outside of the service because they require custom tools, a further disincentive to theft (not to mention the deposit on your card).

People from all walks of life ride them, from young to old, people in business attire or people out doing shopping. You see them everywhere. And I think I only saw one person using a helmet…. Despite the craziness of riding in Paris traffic the Velib has proved a smashing success. It appears many were skeptical about it given how free bike schemes have not done so well in other countries. But the city has put an impressive amount of resources behind it. Not just development of the custom bikes and kiosks themselves, but there is an amazing infrastructure of staff and trucks at night that redistributed the bikes so they don’t get bunched up in certain areas, and of course clean and maintain them.

Would love to see something like this in San Francisco but I have my doubts about how well it would work. Paris is mostly flat, SF definitely is not, but there is also not the respect for communal property in SF that there is in France, and the bikes probably would not get treated well. Not to mention no-one would want to pay for it…