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.

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jeffwask 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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cj 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sounds like SAP donated $250k to fund it.

https://www.pressebox.de/pressemitteilung/sap-ag-walldorf/co...

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ogou 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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rconti 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

As a USian, I had the same thought!

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scyzoryk_xyz an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Insert joke about Egyptian Mummies and British Museums here

	▲	lukan an hour ago \| parent [-]
		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".