alt.hn

5/22/2026 at 5:05:32 PM

1940 Air Terminal Museum Begins Liquidation

 https://www.1940airterminal.org/news/liquidation-of-simulators

by weaponeer

5/22/2026 at 10:56:54 PM

https://www.flickr.com/photos/blairmc99/55275010559/in/photo...

I don't think I've ever seen a manual that expected me to use DeMorgan's Theorem as part of a test procedure... :)

by hex4def6

5/22/2026 at 11:59:58 PM

what you have there is a coding sheet for a GP4. a stored program computer, with drum memory.

eventually, the company would call that a 'system design and mechanization report', which would document the math and equations needed to correctly simulate a small part of an aircraft.

note the marking "link division of general precision". the computer was made by General Precision, of which the Link aviation company was the biggest customer. i had always been told that Link purchased General Precision, but perhaps it was the other way around.

i worked in this industry for about 35 years. this stuff was ancient and forgotten about when I started.

by budman1

5/22/2026 at 5:29:44 PM

I had no idea this closed and I've lived here for six years! I can't believe I didn't go visit.

Surely there is enough money in this city of Houston between airlines that operate here and the oil companies that they spend most of your ticket money on to keep this open?

by dtagames

5/22/2026 at 5:33:48 PM

It really was/is a gem of a museum, very fun to visit and quite approachable. We went a couple times, once when they had some fly-ins that made it extra special.

Hopefully it can be preserved and continue it's life! There is hope: https://www.1940airterminal.org/news/texas-historical-commis...

by ljoshua

5/22/2026 at 6:16:01 PM

I don’t see why they couldn’t make ends meet with events and so on.

There shouldn’t be any huge expenses, unless they were leasing the premises at market rate.

by MichaelZuo

5/22/2026 at 10:51:25 PM

We're in a silent recession, dude. Public good's about to get sold off to monied interests for their private use, like it always is.

by underlipton

5/22/2026 at 6:21:21 PM

The rack in this image appears to house a Texas Instruments minicomputer of some model, not sure exactly which. 980 maybe? Might be fun to play with, but not for $20K.

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e52f79c0260e6...

Note the 8" floppy disk drives also.

by SoftTalker

5/22/2026 at 6:55:46 PM

Usagi Electric is in Texas. He could make use of that thing.

by badc0ffee

5/22/2026 at 11:09:16 PM

We don't need to provide one man with every computer made before 1975. The rest of us would also like to have a chance to play with them.

by theodric

5/22/2026 at 10:09:40 PM

Getting it working would probably be a massive challenge since it’s missing parts.

by arjie

5/24/2026 at 1:22:25 PM

do you think it still runs?

by prismlfx

5/23/2026 at 2:27:57 AM

Even if it was free, it sounds like it’s going to cost more than that to move and house these things

by yaur

5/23/2026 at 10:50:11 AM

At the minimum you’d need a telehandler or forklift capable of lifting 20,000 lbs (according to the listing) which is probably $1,500 for one day with delivery and pickup, a flatbed semi trailer to load it on, and labor to load it. If the equipment isn’t on skids you can lift with a forklift, then you need riggers and a crane truck. Either way sounds fairly expensive, and that’s without having a place to move it to.

by quickthrowman

5/22/2026 at 10:17:53 PM

The 980 was used as the CPU in the Evans and Sutherland Novoview graphics system, part of a flight simulator.

by nsxwolf

5/23/2026 at 12:03:20 AM

The E and S rack was an 'image generator'. That one was called an SP1. I fondly remember the SP3T as being the pinnacle of that series; the T meant "texture processing".

image a computer display made up of 1000 line segments. that is what you would get. it was possible to buy these with an output that was not raster, rather it drew on the CRT with vector segments. incredible light points to simulate night landings.

by budman1

5/22/2026 at 6:28:24 PM

Side note: what a stunning art deco (?) building! (There's a photo on the front page of the site.)

by stdbrouw

5/22/2026 at 7:36:20 PM

To anyone for whom Houston is a bit too far of a drive (plus the fact that the museum now seems closed), but Cincinnati is not: Union Terminal is another beautiful example of art deco.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cincinnati_Union_Terminal

I spent hours photographing in there last summer. Free tours available which will take you into some of the back offices with more art deco goodness.

by macintux

5/22/2026 at 9:24:44 PM

Fellow Union Terminal aficionado here. Also highly recommend to any art deco architecture lovers.

Even if you're not into art deco architecture it's worth a visit. The Omnimax theatre is worth the trip alone, but the museums are great too.

@macintux - It's hard to get on the tour because they sell out, and they don't allow photography, but the high steel tour, which includes walking up to the top of the inside of the half dome, is great. There's some duplication with the behind the scenes tour but it's still worth it. It's probably second to the (now discontinued for liability reasons) Cincinnati subway tour in terms of seeing cool hidden stuff in the Cincinnati area.

by EvanAnderson

5/22/2026 at 11:43:54 PM

And for anyone who says "hey that looks familiar, but I've never been to Cincinnati" it was the inspiration for Justice League headquarters.

by jrumbut

5/22/2026 at 6:53:05 PM

I believe that if we all collectively lowball them, they will drop the price to be lower than $20k.

It is unfortunate to see any museum close. I hope their assessment from the Texas Historical Commission succeeds!

by skyblock500

5/22/2026 at 9:57:39 PM

that's seriously not the issue. if you look at the those pictures of the 737 frame - this is very large system which hasn't operated for many years and is largely just a pile of components at this point. it would probably be easier to rebuild the control system from scratch than try to bring it back to life. this would probably take a team of pretty serious people many years to get functional.

by convolvatron

5/22/2026 at 6:24:14 PM

20k is not bad for an airplane geek. I wish I had space for these.

by system2

5/22/2026 at 11:21:28 PM

Plus transportation

Me too :(

by ChoGGi

5/22/2026 at 7:01:50 PM

I have been to this museum, it is nice. If anyone can support it, please look into it and do so. Thank you.

by rationalist

5/22/2026 at 7:16:12 PM

Museum photos caption: "asdfsd"

by sublinear

5/22/2026 at 11:06:44 PM

This is really sad. I was hopeful the Lone Star Flight Museum would take it over. I spent a few afternoons there with my then much smaller kids. It was a not overdone museum where you could explore around inside the vehicles like a Sikorsky S-34 and the not-working simulators.

by adolph

5/23/2026 at 7:47:18 AM

I would love to see someone on CuriousMarc's, TubeTime's or Usagi's level of dedication get all that and rebuild/reconstruct it. Maybe if all the technology geeks of YouTube got together they could reconstruct one of those to a working level. The 737 one looks like it still has most of the components....

by dark-star

5/22/2026 at 9:51:06 PM

wow, this blows on so many levels.

by captainregex