Like all good things, the foundation of this collection was laid quite by accident...
I am professionally involved in importing CNC machines. When I walked into a colleague's office one day and saw a cute Robco 1, the reaction was quite spontaneous - "Wow, I haven't seen one of those for a long time!".
Noble envy threw me in search of such a robot. Luckily for me, within a few months I managed to buy a whole kit, along with a computer and diskettes with the drivers. When my son walked into the room with the computer and the robot, he gasped, "What the hell is that? How does it work?"
It occurred to me that our children had no idea that Bulgaria manufactured robots, and used computers assembled here to power them decdes ago. I tried to find more information on the internet, but... I hit a rock. There are a lot of sites with some sketchy and scattered information about who did what and when, but in summary it's nowhere to be found. Somehow the idea came naturally and I decided to leave something behind - to give the public an exhibition where everyone could look, read and make the connections about a multi billion industry that has brought Bulgaria a lot of benefits and knowledge.
The period I have set out to recreate here is from the early 1960s to 1990. The purpose of the site is not to evaluate the socialismq which is a part of our history, good or bad - I want the information to be conveyed quite truthfully, aside from any emotion, with a full understanding of the times in which things happened. After all, this was the time of the cold war, every industrial model stolen was a 'nail in the coffin of imperialism'.
Nowadays Bulgaria has a reputation for producing good programmers. Needless to say, if schools had not been equipped with Pravets computers during that period, things would look different today.
I hope you enjoy the exhibits as much as I do when I come across another specimen saved from destruction and manage to find information - what it is, when, why and by whom it was created, who used it.
I will try to make sure that any information posted here is verified in at least 2 places or backed up with documentation.
I would be grateful to anyone who has access to such documentation or still has similar machines stored to share them with me. I'm willing to pay some amount, but I don't buy at any price. I do not refuse donations as long as it is not scrap. Please send pictures of what you want to sell/give away.
This is the place to thank those who helped with sourcing information and exhibits.
And at last - why Amuseum? My family name is Atanasov. The suggestion came from Ivaylo Ivanov - Ivu (the guy who helped to make this website happen). I'm not so vain as to advertise my last name, but I liked the idea of the site name starting with A and ranking first on every list. ;)
Wishing you a pleasant browse,
Vladimir Atanasov
P.S. Full gallery of exhibits is available in Bulgarian language. Will do my best to translate on time, however there are constant changes and additions to text, so translated version might not be up to date. For Bulgarian - switch at the top.