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Enter is a museum for computer and consumer electronics in the Swiss town of
Solothurn Solothurn ( ; ; ; ; ) is a town, a municipality, and the capital of the canton of Solothurn in Switzerland. It is located in the north-west of Switzerland on the banks of the Aare and on the foot of the Weissenstein Jura mountains. The town is ...
. Now a non-profit foundation ("Stiftung ENTER"), it originated as the project of Swiss entrepreneur Felix Kunz. It is the largest private technology collection open to the public in
Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...
. Its current location in Solothurn opened in 2011.


History

The museum originated in the private collection of the Swiss entrepreneur Felix Kunz who has been collecting computers and electronics since the mid 1970s. In 2010, Kunz established a foundation for the museum jointly with Peter Regenass, a collector of calculators. In 2011, the Enter museum moved into a building right at the train station in Solothurn with a surface area of 1800 square metres. In 2022, the museum will be closed and transferred to the nearby village of Derendingen and re-open there on a larger scale in 2023, using a surface area of over 5000 square meters.


Collection

The museum displays about 10,000 exhibits from the history of radio, television and computers from the early years to the present. Many of the exhibits were developed and produced in the Solothurn region, e.g. by Autophon or
Anton Gunzinger Anton Gunzinger (born 8 May 1956, Welschenrohr, Switzerland) is a Swiss electrical engineer and entrepreneur. He was a developer of high-performance parallelized computers. Life Anton Gunzinger first did an apprenticeship as a radio electricia ...
. The collection has a focus on history of technology made in Switzerland with products of Studer-Revox Paillard, Bolex,
Crypto AG Crypto AG was a Swiss company specialising in communications and information security founded by Boris Hagelin in 1952. The company was secretly purchased in 1970 by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and West German Federal Intelligence Se ...
, Gretag. It also shows the main stages of computer history with examples of
IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...
mainframes A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise ...
,
Cray Cray Inc., a subsidiary of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, is an American supercomputer manufacturer headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It also manufactures systems for data storage and analytics. Several Cray supercomputer systems are listed ...
supercomputers,
Commodore Commodore may refer to: Ranks * Commodore (rank), a naval rank ** Commodore (Royal Navy), in the United Kingdom ** Commodore (India), in India ** Commodore (United States) ** Commodore (Canada) ** Commodore (Finland) ** Commodore (Germany) or ' ...
home computer Home computers were a class of microcomputers that entered the market in 1977 and became common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a s ...
s,
personal computer A personal computer, commonly referred to as PC or computer, is a computer designed for individual use. It is typically used for tasks such as Word processor, word processing, web browser, internet browsing, email, multimedia playback, and PC ...
s from
Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...
and IBM. It claims to feature "the largest physical collection of working Apple devices in Europe". Part of the museum is a collection of 300
mechanical calculators A mechanical calculator, or calculating machine, is a mechanical device used to perform the basic operations of arithmetic automatically, or a simulation like an analog computer or a slide rule. Most mechanical calculators were comparable in si ...
of the Swiss collector Peter Regenass. Furthermore, it holds a large collection on the history of radio and television including a vast number of radio and TV sets, recording devices for audio and video and projectors including the
Eidophor An Eidophor was a video projector developed in the 1940s, used to create theater-sized images from an analog video signal. The name Eidophor is derived from the Greek word-roots ''eido'' and ''phor'' meaning 'image' and 'bearer' (carrier). It ...
projectors used 1958 - 1999.Over time the Enter Museum has integrated other collections such as the Audiorama Montreux, which closed its doors in 2010 or the computer collection of the Swiss collector Robert Weiss or Peter Beck. Its collection has been named as outstanding by the media. There is hardly a computer of the past 50 years that is not on display there, according to a 2013
Neue Zürcher Zeitung The (''NZZ''; "New Newspaper of Zurich") is German language daily newspaper, published by NZZ Mediengruppe in Zurich. The paper was founded in 1780. It has a reputation as a high-quality newspaper, as the German Swiss newspaper of record ...
article.


Selected exhibits

* Switzerland's first radio station that started regular emission in
Lausanne Lausanne ( , ; ; ) is the capital and largest List of towns in Switzerland, city of the Swiss French-speaking Cantons of Switzerland, canton of Vaud, in Switzerland. It is a hilly city situated on the shores of Lake Geneva, about halfway bet ...
as early as 26 February 1923. * Early
home computer Home computers were a class of microcomputers that entered the market in 1977 and became common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a s ...
s such as
Mark-8 The Mark-8 is a microcomputer design from 1974, based on the Intel 8008 CPU (which was the world's first 8-bit microprocessor). The Mark-8 was designed by Jonathan Titus, a Virginia Tech graduate student in chemistry. After building the machine ...
minicomputer, Commodore PET 2001 or
Apple 1 Apple 1 or ''variation'', may refer to: * '' Apple I'', the first home computer from Apple Computer (Apple Inc.) * Apple One Apple One is a subscription which bundles a number of premium services provided by Apple Inc. into tiered packages, fi ...
* Mechanical calculators such as The Millionaire calculator and
Curta The Curta is a hand-held mechanical calculator designed by Curt Herzstark. It is known for its extremely compact design: a small cylinder that fits in the palm of the hand. It was affectionately known as the "pepper grinder" or "peppermill ...
. * Cryptographic devices of
Crypto AG Crypto AG was a Swiss company specialising in communications and information security founded by Boris Hagelin in 1952. The company was secretly purchased in 1970 by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and West German Federal Intelligence Se ...
, Gretag and others including the Swiss
Nema The National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) is the largest trade association of electrical equipment manufacturers in the United States. Founded in 1926, it advocates for the industry and publishes standards for electrical product ...
and the Russian
Fialka In cryptography, Fialka (M-125) is the name of a Cold War-era Soviet cipher machine. A rotor machine, the device uses 10 rotors, each with 30 contacts along with mechanical pins to control stepping. It also makes use of a punched card mechanism. ...
* The Smaky-computer of Swiss engineer Jean-Daniel Nicoud and the Lilith Computer by
Niklaus Wirth Niklaus Emil Wirth ( IPA: ) (15 February 1934 – 1 January 2024) was a Swiss computer scientist. He designed several programming languages, including Pascal, and pioneered several classic topics in software engineering. In 1984, he won the Tu ...
* The video projector
Eidophor An Eidophor was a video projector developed in the 1940s, used to create theater-sized images from an analog video signal. The name Eidophor is derived from the Greek word-roots ''eido'' and ''phor'' meaning 'image' and 'bearer' (carrier). It ...
used 1958 – 1999. * The outdoor projector Spitlight used at the 1956 Olympic winter games in Cortina di Ampezzo.


Museum shop for spare parts

The museum endeavors to keep as many of its artifacts working and has a number of veteran engineers and specialists that support the museum as volunteers. The museum keeps a stock of 1.5 million electronic and mechanical spare parts including 40'000 radio valves that can also be purchased at their nominal price from the museum shop.


See also

*
List of museums in Switzerland This is a list of museums in Switzerland, sorted by canton and city / municipality. Included are Swiss natural history museums, science museums, transport museums, railway museums, military museums, art museums and ethnographic museums, among ...


References


External links


Enter Museum
Solothurn
Vintage Electronic Shop

Solothurn Tourism Organization: Museum Enter
{{Authority control Computer museums Museums in Switzerland Technology museums in Switzerland