I (through my own ignorance?) haven't had much appreciation for this bit of history, but I recently visited the fascinating Museum Plantin-Moretus in Antwerp.
They were a publisher and printing house in Antwerp, starting in the early waves of printing presses that swept Europe after Gutenberg.
Amazingly, it stayed in the family and the family obviously had an incredible devotion to their origins, they have their original presses (thought to be the oldest in the world), their original type (their founder was a big believer in the power of good type and bought up the rights where he could), the original building, their original library. It is quite the adventure (in a totally nerdish but culturally significant way!).
It was eventually sold to the city where it has been a museum ever since.
Back to the topic at hand, I agree with you, can't someone acquire this??! :)
I've often thought that the best Civilization would actively maintain living examples of each historical milieu. A stone age place and a middle ages place, a mid century place, and so on. In this way the methods and knowledge of the past would not be lost, and in the event of a calamity (like a Carrington event, or nuclear war), it would accelerate our recovery. Presumably the highest tech'd civ would impose order on the rest to prevent the stronger civs attacking the weaker ones (only the strongest civ could possibly enforce this).
(The prospect of having to recapitulate the advances of the last 200 years fills me with indescribably weariness. Physical typesetting being a good example. Who is foolish enough to think you can "just read a book about it" and get a working press going?)
Interesting thought experiment. I'd wager there are equally interesting ethics challenges that would need addressing in order to actually do something like this well.
My understanding is that the archive isn't being disposed of, but will be going into the Science Museum long term storage. The photographs are not intended as a replacement for the collections.
After decades of corporate propaganda, the mainstream view is that "goverment can't do anything".
This has led to people expecting the rich to donate for this sort of outcome, instead of demanding better organization from the government that's eating away almost half their income.
Adobe could easily make a one-time donation of $millions to set up an endowment which would keep them running for the foreseeable future. The government could as well, I just see it as less likely. The government seems much more likely to maintain an active control over something like this, opening up the possibility of political interference in the future.
Boo. Can’t someone like Adobe fund a historical archive like this. Photographs are not a replacement for the physical history of this vanished trade.