Lonnie Mimms and the Computer Museum of America
Lonnie Mimms rarely has time to think about the exact
moment when donations and flea market finds became
the world’s biggest collection of vintage tech. Call Mimms
on any given day, and he’s usually unloading a semi full of
old computers he’s purchased. Ask him for a total count
of his collection, and he can only say it’s enough to fill six
storage facilities in and around Roswell, Georgia.
The depth of his Apple collection alone is impres-
sive. It starts with five Apple I computers and traces the
tech giant’s evolution with rare wire-wrapped prototypes,
gadgets with a serial number of 1, and the drawings and
schematics in which bold ideas were first put to paper.
“I probably have the deepest collection,” Mimms
said. “I’ve got original documents that came from the first
nine Microsoft employees, the Apple Is, one of four proto-
types for the Apple II.… I take it very seriously. I am looking
for historical significance and the stories behind them that
bring them to life. Otherwise, they’re just boat anchors.”
While several serious collectors have taken it
upon themselves to build a history museum dedicated
to Apple, Mimms’s collection gives him a premier status
among them. When the Smithsonian needs a piece of
tech history, its curators usually call Mimms.
Mimms once guessed he had a quarter of a million
tech artifacts, but that number is constantly growing as
he acquires new pieces on a daily basis. In 2016 alone, he
bought seven large collections, including 20 Cray super-
computers that each weigh a couple of tons.
A fraction of what Mimms has collected over 30 years
is on display only a few times a year at a vintage tech festival
he hosts, where he opens a well-curated but small pop-up
museum called the Computer Museum of America in an old
CompUSA building he owns.
New Developments
In 2016, Mimms purchased a two-story building that
was once a Burlington Coat Factory. His vision for the
Computer Museum of America is of a public museum
that will eventually include an event center; coworking
spaces; and interactive wings dedicated to robotics, 3D
printing, artificial intelligence, and the like. He has been
courting investors, especially those in Atlanta’s growing
tech sector.
Mimms has also hired a full-time tech archivist,
who is compiling a complete inventory of the collection,
and held the grand opening in July 2019. For now, the
museum will be open only on weekends.
“This has to be something that isn’t dependent
on me,” Mimms said. “Ultimately, I want this to be an
institution that lasts for a long time. There should be a
lot of interest from individuals who have basically made
money in the industry and want to preserve the past
and a legacy.”
Mimms hopes to create a space that is accessible
to people of all ages: “The older people can come in and
reminisce and find the first machine they used, and the
younger people can get inspired by seeing things that
led to the device that is in their pocket.”
How a Passion Was Ignited
Mimms’s plans for a new museum bring his life full
circle, because he is creating a space much like the one
that incubated his love for computers as a teenager.
In the 1970s, Mimms took a class at an Atlanta
science center, where he learned programming on a
time-share IBM 360. A friend’s father who was a pro-
fessor at Georgia Tech gave his son and Mimms access
to play on a Cyber 74. His mother would drop him off at
the university every Saturday morning and pick him up
at night.
As microcomputers began to hit the market, Mimms
convinced his father to purchase a Processor Technology
Sol-20 for the family real estate business in 1977. He set
it up and wrote programs to help run the business.
Two years later, as his father worked on a devel-
opment deal to help the Chromatics Corp relocate its
headquarters, Mimms asked his father if he could get
the company to throw in one of its computers. As part
of the arrangement, Chromatics provided a refurbished
Compucolor, the first microcomputer with color graph-
ics, which cost $18,000 at the time. In fact, the Sol-20
and the Compucolor could be considered artifacts 1 and
2 in Mimms’s collection.
“There was a point where I made a conscious deci-
sion to push the accelerator,” he said. “I was buying stuff
at flea markets and garage sales. I kept everything I came
across, and when I had around 15 or so, I realizedI had a
collection.”
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