20th Anniversary Edition!

Welcome to Mr. Martin's Website, now in its 20th year! The website was started in the Fall of 2004 as a teacher website and a mini on-line museum. I'm retired as a teacher, but you will still find a museum with vintage computers, calculators, cameras, bicycles, typewriters, cars and other technology. The museum includes over 1,000 items including over 600 cameras, 150 calculators, 120 typewriters, 50 bicycles, 50 computers, and 70 "other technology" items including phones, televisions, phonographs and radios. Items date from the late 19th century to today. The museum has had over 6 million page views since it was started in 2004. Check back to the site now and then. I occassionally add items. Most of the items are purchased at garage sales or through Craigslist or eBay. A few of the items are things I purchased new. A few of the items are also donations.

The museum has two main purposes. First, is to document the rapid increase in technology especially in my lifetime. (I was born in 1957.) It is a tribute to the designers, engineers and workers who have made and repaired these incredible items that have dramatically increased productivity and improved our lives. The second purpose, and somewhat counter to the first, is to temper our enthusiasm for having the new, best thing all the time. That thing you crave so much today, whether it is a new camera, phone, computer, tablet, or whatever, will soon be worth a fraction of what it is today and end up at a garage sale or disposal site. For our pocketbooks, our mental well-being and our environment, choose well designed technology that will improve you life for years to come. Obviously, technologies do and should change. There may be compelling reasons of cost and convenience to replace your film camera with a new digital camera. I was delighted when computers came out so I could ditch the typewriter and the agony of typos. However, well designed items can be useful for decades. For example, a good SLR film camera from the 1960s or 1970s (e.g. a Minolta SRT 101) can still be used today to take professional quality photos. A good chromoly road bike from the 1980s can provide a lifetime of recreational riding. The museum includes both well designed items like the Minolta SRT 101 mentioned above that have stood the test of time and items designed basically to get consumers to buy something new like 110 Instamatic cameras from the 1970s which were a poor design from the beginning (the film size is too small) and were largely worthless a decade later.