When was the last time you visited a museum?

Perhaps you were on holiday exploring a town and stepped into a museum in a foreign country? A world very different to your holiday setting of Airbnb accommodation, smartphone city guide and TripAdvisor restaurant selection.

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Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) pilot model. — Automatic Computing Engine ACE
© The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum.

Museums are central to looking after our culture, history, science, and technological development. Visiting a design museum is always fun. Colours, patterns, and shapes that excited people only a few years ago are material for a museum, while many items may still be in use or on display at a relative’s home. A quick glance at the object gives it the stamp of outdatedness in seconds. No need for QR codes or AI to give us that sense of time and relevance.

…. a fraction of a second you know that this is an object for a museum ….

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2021-June-Finance-Machine-medium_1981_0391_0001__0016_-1 — Automatic Bookkeeping Calculating Machine © The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum.

Have a look at the Main Frame for Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) (Pilot, 1950) or the Automatic Bookkeeping Calculating Machine (1935-1945). Within a fraction of a second you know that this is an object for a museum, even though both objects were manufactured less than 100 years ago. In contrast, when wandering through a museum showing a collection of Greek artefacts, a casual visitor may easily misjudge the age of an object by many hundreds of years when trying to determine when it was in use and relevant.

Nowadays, items can find a place of honour in a museum while some of their counterparts may still be in use.

Now is the perfect time to start planning a virtual museum for the MICROMASTER. This frequency converter by Siemens has been sold globally more than five million times and is a much-loved product based on its reliability and perfect fit for a wide range of applications. The product was launched in the late 1990s and is about to be phased out. As developments today are so much faster, we want to ensure you don’t miss out on saying goodbye to the MICROMASTER whilst transitioning to SINAMICS. If you recently completed a retrofit project, take some time to appreciate the many hours your MICROMASTER has served you and your business.

In the next few months I will be sharing a variety of stories around the MICROMASTER. In a mini Podcast series posted on this blog you will be hearing how this great converter developed and how it has been an integral part of many people’s lives. Services like Training and Hotline support played a critical role when the product was first launched. Today Customer Service completes the finale stage of the customer journey with Retrofit and Digital Transformation.

The virtual MICROMASTER museum will include stories, music and images that will bring back memories to many. At the same time, it is an invitation to anyone with a curious mind. A perfect setting for few minutes of growth mindset.