AntéMémoire - Europe's first computer museum

More than 100,000 expected at first exhibition

12 July 2007 16:13 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

Surprise your beloved by whisking them off to Paris for the weekend - and then dash their hopes by spending the whole time browsing around the AntéMémoire computer museum.

After months of preparation, the AntéMémoire project has come to life with the opening of the first permanent European exhibition dedicated to computing.

Based in the Grande Arche of La Défense business area in Paris, the exhibition faithfully rebuilds and highlights the development of new technology over a 50 year period, from 1940 to 1990.

This will be the first independent, permanent Computer Museum entirely dedicated to computing, telecommunications, and the development of the computing profession in Europe.

Philippe Nieuwbourg, President of the AntéMémoire association says of the project:

"In order to dream about the technology of tomorrow, we have to understand today’s technology. And to understand this progress, we have to know its history and its principal stages of development."

"This is the objective that AntéMémoire has set for itself: to collect and preserve the memory of the history of information technology, put it into perspective in relation to today’s users, and explain these steps, in order to pass on this knowledge to future generations".