This Museum Is (Not) Obsolete: ‘I can’t stand touchscreens. I think the old stuff's more exciting’

Pushing open the Nintendo Gameboy-covered door of Ramsgate’s This Museum Is (Not) Obsolete, it’s immediately apparent that this is not your usual tourist attraction. Stepping inside, you are immediately faced with a dizzying view of bastardised toys, old tech, flashing lights, and blinking screens. 

If you grew up with an urge to push any mystery button that popped into your eye line, it will reignite that desire immediately. The good news is that founder Sam Battle was also that kid and he’s built this shrine to obsolete technology with exactly that in mind. As much of what he’s curated here as possible has been set up to be played with.

Everything can be used to make sound in some way. Some of it by design, some of it not. You can play a massive synthesizer that takes up an entire wall or a church organ that has been wired up to an electronic keyboard. You can also knock out a tune on an old telephone exchange if you so wish. 

“It's musical but it goes off into things that make noise and things that end up just being weird,” says Sam. “There's a lot of stuff that isn't musical in the slightest, but it makes noise.”

Aside from just being fun, Sam says the museum’s musicality helps people understand how things work in a way that isn’t possible with a lot of modern technology. 

“Touchscreens are the bane of my life,” he laughs. “Can't stand them. The old stuff's just more exciting.”

“I think it's important for kids to see the functioning because it makes it easier for a penny to drop than it being described in a very ethereal way,” he goes on. “It's hard to imagine how a computer works. But if you can see things working, then it starts making a little more sense.”

Sam didn’t pluck the museum’s concept out of the air. Rather it’s an extension of his YouTube channel Look Mum No Computer, where he has been building all manner of weird and wonderful instruments for the entertainment of his viewers for several years. Much of what is on display, fans will have first seen in Sam’s videos.

However, the idea of running his own museum dates back to Sam’s childhood and summers spent visiting the Withernsea Lighthouse Museum, where his grandparents were trustees. 

“It was always dark and there were creepy mannequins,” he recalls. “I thought it was awesome and I was like, ‘One day I'll go to set up a museum.’ I didn't really know how or what until I started doing YouTube videos.”

As his catalogue of videos increased, so too did his collection of often quite large creations sitting in various storage units. Not wanting to sacrifice them to the gods of landfill, but also rarely - if ever - using them beyond their life on video, Sam upheld his childhood promise to himself.

“The idea of just having a collection that was only for me just didn't really appeal to me,” he says. 

The pivotal moment came during a visit to the Micro Museum, which also sits on the same street and which once housed part of its vintage computer collection in the building now occupied by This Museum Is (Not) Obsolete. The museum’s team mentioned they were planning to sell the building and Sam jumped at the opportunity, taking on the property in early 2020 - just as COVID-19 hit.

“Lockdown happened and that was the worst,” he smiles, saying that he initially thought he'd made “a massive mistake.” Although in hindsight he says it actually afforded him time to develop the idea more fully. 

“I don't know whether it would have really worked if I’d just opened straight away,” he says. “Lockdown was somewhat of a blessing in disguise for it because it gave me more time to spend on it.”

“It's constantly evolving,” he adds. “It was tiny at the start and it's just got gradually bigger and better and more refined. And it's not done yet.”

Indeed, when I arrive at the museum I find Sam and two of his team in the process of turning a small room at the back of the building into a recording studio. This control room will let professional musicians record their own music using the museum’s exhibits. Once that’s complete, the next item on the to-do list is to knock down two walls to make more room for a growing collection of organs. 

“It's gonna be like Alton Towers where there's a keyboard and you can control all of the machines in there,” he enthuses. “We've got them all but they're in a lock-up garage at the minute so can't wait to shove them in.”

This includes a newly acquired collection of Compton organs, which he describes as being made up of “little electrostatic vinyl players with drawings of sound waves on them - one for every single sound.”

“It looks mental,” he adds, noting that “the spinny bits” each carry a charge of 450 volts. “So I’ve gotta figure out how to make it all safe,” he says with a slight glint in his eye. 

“That's the other thing - it takes a lot more time to make everything safer than I would have done before because it’s for the public,” he reassures me. “You've got a certain duty to make sure it's all maintained. It's a crash course in risk assessments and fire safety management, all that stuff I would have never thought about before but it's got to be done. You have a responsibility.”

Looking after everything and making sure it stays working is one of the main ongoing jobs in the museum. “It all needs constant maintenance,” he says. “That's the downside of it all. Modern stuff is a lot more reliable. This stuff's not great. I'd say there's a guarantee that 75% of the exhibits that are intended to be interactive are working. Some things are very fragile, so they can't be used.”

Regardless, Sam still strongly believes that interactivity is important, particularly when it comes to sparking the imaginations of his younger visitors - allowing them “to press a button and then take that to another conclusion of their own.”

It’s a misconception, he insists, that children are only interested in smartphones and tablets now, with no interest in these older, more tactile items. While the museum attracts a wide range of visitors, it’s often children who are the most enthusiastic. 

“You can only give them the start point,” he says. “You can't force them to do anything. So it's about trying to find something that they're into and then getting them to get into it.”

“It's fine if some things get broken,” he goes on. “A kid broke a key the other day and the parents were very apologetic but I was like, ‘He was curious, it's great.’ So, you know, you should be allowed to mess about.”

“I always took my toys apart and that's how it started,” he says. “At one point my parents got me see-through toys to try and stop it. It just made me want to take them apart more and then I just kept on fixing things and as time went on I broke less things. I have no formal training in electronics but I'm certainly very competent now, I think.”

Next month the museum will be involved in Ramsgate Festival Of Sound, which takes place on August 22-25. The venue will be open for all four days of the festival with plans for a temporary exhibition running a tape loop around the museum. 

Meanwhile, Sam will be playing a show as part of the festival on August 22 at St George’s Church. For that he is building a new, experimental sythesizer influenced by the early sounds of electronic music in the 1960s. 

It’s clear that Sam has a real love for electronics and building new creations, making it difficult to find the line between work and play. Asked what he does to unwind, he says he’s currently “mainly into classic car repair.”

You can visit This Museum Is (Not) Obsolete at 5-7 Church Walk, Ramstage, CT11 8RA. Over the summer it will be open every weekend and on Wednesdays. Check the website for more information.