The exhibitions integrate contemporary works into the museum's collection, workspaces and archives, among mechanical counting devices, components of Denmark’s first computer DASK (Dansk Aritmetisk Sekvens-Kalkulator, nicknamed the Electro Brain, originally built into an entire villa), as well as rare mainframes, early personal computers, and pivotal developments in global computing history.
Rather than a fascination with technology, the exhibitions use it in dialogue with the temporal remove inherent in a museum setting as a framework for reflecting on cultural shifts across time, addressing post-digital conditions and emerging forms such as artificial intelligence, generative media, quantum computing, neurotechnology, and synthetic biology, while situated in the histories that shape the present. The exhibitions explore how such developments reconfigure power and identity, govern access and knowledge, challenge ecology and ethics, and extend the boundaries of perception and consciousness.
Throughout history, the adoption of tools has rarely been dictated from above, but shaped collectively, as communities experiment and choose what proves useful. Today, knowledge and participation have expanded, even as the architectures of technology and thought are increasingly constructed elsewhere. Evolution and invention remain human traits, but technologies function and endure only when rooted in the practice of the people who use it.
Address: Dansk Datahistorisk Museum
Charlottegårdsvej 1
2640 Hedehusene
Denmark
Opening hours: Thursdays 17:00 – 20:00,
first Sunday of the month 10:00 – 13:00 (optional museum tour),
or by appointment
Phone: 0045 3091 6285
Email: info@publicdomain-os.net
Web: publicdomain-os.net
@: publicdomain_os
Frequency: 136.1 Hz / 432 Hz / 1013–1014 Hz
Organiser: Jan S. Hansen
Graphic design: Andreas Peitersen
Font: OCR-X-Regular (Maxitype, 2019), derived from OCR-A (ATF, 1966). Early typeface for computer text recognition. Designed for low-resolution optical scanners. Simplified angular forms balancing machine accuracy with legibility rigid for the human eye. First deliberate machine–human reading convergence.
Supported by: The Danish Arts Foundation, Axel Muusfeldt Foundation and Høje-Taastrup Municipality.
Universe, age, and composition: 13.8 billion years old. Approximately 4.4% baryonic matter, 22.4% unknown dark matter, 73.2% undisclosed dark energy.
Stars, age: App. 10 billion years old.
1: Unity, singular state. In physics first whole, in theology indivisible, in binary on. Planck unit, smallest measurable quantum of length, time, and energy, foundation of physical reality. Mathematically neutral in multiplication, identity element of all numbers. Boolean, first pulse, synapse, spark. Quantum collapse of possibility into one observed state, Unicode U+0031. ASCII code 49. Single pixel.
Sun, age, volume: App. 5 billion years old, size app. 1.3 million Earths to fill volume of the Sun.
Earth, age: Molten core app. 4.5 billion years old, first oceans app. 3.8 billion years old, Genesis 1 King James v.1 Earth 6,000 years old. Claim of a Year 0, by one measure it is Year 8526, by another, Year 7.
2: First prime, only even prime. Division, basis of logic and code. Electricity, binary choice, first division, 1 becomes aware of itself.
Current life expectancy: 73-74 years.
Year 3000 life expectancy: 120-150 years.
Year 10,000 life expectancy: 500-1000 years / indefinite / radical longevity possible.
3: Second prime. Minimum for pattern, first and smallest stable structure. Triangle, trinity, RGB, syntax of stability.
Incandescent light bulb conversion: App. 90% of electricity into heat, 10% into light, LED bulb app. 10% of energy converted into heat, 90% into light.
Speed of light: 300.000 km per second.
4: Four bases of DNA (A, T, C, G), quaternary code of life. First square number (2²). One hex digit = 4 bits (nibble). Four directions, elements, seasons.
Distance from Earth to Sun: App. 150 million km.
Average weight of a human: App. 65 kg.
Combined weight of humans on Earth: App. 521,500,000,000 kg.
5: Human number. Fingers, senses, points of contact, interface, limbs in motion.
Speed of thoughts and emotions: 120 m per second along neural axons.
Average weight of a human brain: App. 1305 grams.
6: Hexagonal symmetry, most efficient natural pattern. Snowflake, hive, carbon ring, pixel grid, geometry of compression and fit, combinatorial efficiency. Upside-down 9.
Atoms in human brain: App. 10^26 / 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 / 100 septillion.
Stars in Universe: App. 2 × 10^23 / 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 / 200 billion trillion.
Ants on Earth: App. 2 × 10^16 / 20,000,000,000,000,000 / 20 quadrillion, 2.5 million per human.
7: Prime, seven days, colors, heavens, tones, spectrum. Completion as pattern, cycle closed.
First fully electronic general-purpose computer: ENIAC, 1945, 30 tons, filled a room, 5,000 additions per second, a fraction of a modern smartphone’s power.
First computer in Denmark: DASK, 1957, 3.5 tons, developed by Regnecentralen, based on Sweden’s BESK design, enhanced with core memory and index registers, ALGOL programs, built into a villa in Valby, Copenhagen.
Digital data created, 2025: 181 zettabytes / 181,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes, equivalent to over 402 million terabytes daily.
8: Infinity, 8-bit, octet, byte, octave. Pattern closure through doubling, loop, feedback, recursion.
Quantum computers, 2025: Over 100 operational systems using superconducting qubits, trapped ions, photonics, and topological designs. Coherence and stability remain limited, with fidelities near 99%. True advantage requires thousands of stable qubits sustained over time. Research focuses on error correction, material quality, and control precision.
Quantum disruption, potential: Molecular simulation accelerates discovery of new drugs, catalysts, and advanced materials. Quantum computing challenges classical encryption, prompting adoption of quantum-safe security. Optimisation in logistics, finance, and AI gains speed and precision as solvers approach global optima. Quantum models enhance climate prediction, weather simulation, and complex system design, merging computation with physical law and reshaping scientific method.
Quantum worldview shift, speculative: Advancing quantum research challenges classical frameworks of certainty, identity, causality, and linear time. Probabilistic systems and entanglement reveal a reality defined by relationships rather than fixed states, where dualities appear as surface effects of a deeper coherence. As established systems of belief, science, and philosophy evolve or recede, perception and measurement emerge as active components in outcome, blurring boundaries between matter, information, and observation.
9: Highest and last single digit, digital threshold, return loop, end before reset, nine months human term. Upside-down 6.
Ada Lovelace: 1815–1852, mathematician and writer, collaborator of Charles Babbage on the Analytical Engine. Wrote the first published algorithm for a machine, considered the earliest formulation of computer programming. Described how numbers could represent symbols and operations. Anticipated the idea of general-purpose computation, often regarded as the first person to conceive of the programmable computer.
First hard disk: 1956, IBM 305 RAMAC, 5 MB, size of two refrigerators.
10: Decimal system, counting system from human hands. In binary, 2, in code, 1010.
Modern microSD: 1 TB, fingernail-sized, 200,000 times more capacity than 1956 drive.
Google’s estimated storage: Multi-exabyte range, app. 10^18 / 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes, digital memory palace for civilization.
Number of internet-connected devices, 2025: App. 15–20 billion, nearly 3 per person.
11: Palindromic prime, mirror symmetry, repetition mistaken for pattern.
Bits to simulate the known universe: App. 10^120 / 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, beyond all current storage.
First email sent: 1971, content QWERTYUIOP.
12: Duodecimal system, pre-decimal arithmetic, standard before tens took over. Hours, months, disciples, inches, tones.
First brain-computer interface: 1998, rhesus monkey moved a computer cursor using neural activity.
Living bacteria used as data storage: CRISPR-encoded gifs inside E. coli, five frames of galloping horse, retrieved frame by frame.
DNA storage stability: Up to 1 million years, requires no electricity, apocalypse-proof memory.
13: Prime, irregular, avoided. Missing floor in some buildings, taboo, fear, lucky.
Cybernetic limbs response time: Milliseconds, faster than human reflexes, enables near-instant motion control through neural interfaces.
First synthetic cell: 2010, J. Craig Venter Institute, first organism with a fully synthetic genome, assembled from digital code and inserted into living cell.
Oldest preserved digital file: 1951, LEO I computer, payroll program stored on punch tape, still readable.
14: Two sevens. Doubling symmetry, binary of balance.
Bit rot: Gradual corruption of digital data over time, digital aging.
Oldest mechanical clock ticking: App. 1386, Salisbury Cathedral, England.
16: Hexadecimal base. Digital structure, machine thought, pixel logic, color code, memory segment.
Digital afterlife companies, 2025: 20+ startups, preserve consciousness, likeness, legacy, fear of death.
Data soul size: Estimated at 1–10 zettabytes.
18: Oxygen-18, isotope tracing ancient climates. Fibonacci to 1000, step of the golden ratio. East Asian phonetic echo of prosper, lucky number.
First AI religion: Created 2017, Way of the Future, worship of the singularity.
Machine rights timeline: Speculated 2100–2200, ask for personal naming.
20: Fingers and toes. Vigesimal counting system. Foundation of Mayan mathematics. Count of early exchange, shells, hands, and steps.
Unix time begins: January 1, 1970, 00:00:00 UTC, the Unix epoch.
Year 2038 problem: Unix time overflow, January 19, 2038, 03:14:07. 32-bit systems reach max value 2,147,483,647 seconds, the point of potential rollover to 1901, risking crashes and invalid timestamps.
23: Pairs of chromosomes. Seconds for blood to circulate the human body. Bridge between number and pattern. Chaos, coincidence, apophenia, frequency illusion.
Microchips on Earth, 2025: App. 1 × 10^13 / 10,000,000,000,000 / 10 trillion, 1,250 per person.
Microchip transistor count, 2025: App. 1.84 × 10^11 / 184,000,000,000 / 184 billion per chip.
24: Frames per second. Threshold of movement perception, human persistence of vision, standardised illusion of movement threshold.
Deep Time recorder: The Long Now Foundation, 10,000 Year Clock, designed with potential endurance beyond civilisation.
Atomic clock drift: 1 second every 100 million years, more accurate than Earth’s rotation.
Fastest robot: Boston Dynamics Cheetah, 28.3 mph / 45.5 km/h.
32: Bit depth early computer, modern systems still affected by legacy code.
First industrial robot: 1961, Unimate, installed at GM plant in New Jersey, handled hot die-cast metal pieces.
Humanoid robots, 2025: Hundreds to low thousands active across healthcare, hospitality, research, and light manufacturing. Pepper robot, 2014–2021, 1.2 m tall with chest touchscreen and cloud AI, 27,000 units produced, most now inactive or repurposed for research.
Lights-out factories: Fully automated sites operating in darkness without human presence. Robots assemble and maintain systems autonomously, humans monitor remotely.
64: I Ching hexagram, chessboard squares, 64-bit computation, QR codes, neural network grids 64-unit structure, perfect cube 4x4x4, symbol of completeness.
Robotic surgery precision: Sub-millimeter accuracy / <0.03 mm, enables delicate procedures with enhanced control, beyond steadiness of human hand.
72: Average heartbeats per minute. Celestial geometry in multiples of 72. 1/5 of a circle, harmonious architecture, celestial precession, precession of equinoxes.
Number of virtual worlds, 2025: 1000+, digital societies, expanding immersive experiences.
First VR headset: 1968, Sword of Damocles.
VR pain research: Shown to alleviate acute and chronic pain, brain believes what it sees.
100: Percent as total. Century, Kármán line at 100 km, water boils at standard pressure. Decimal bias in measurement, HTTP status 100, top score, nanoparticle cutoff once set at 100 nm.
Websites on internet: App. 2 billion.
Number of abandoned websites, 2025: App. 900 million.
127: /127.0.0.1, localhost, computer talking to itself, inner loop, self-address.
Surface web, 2025: App. 5-10% of total web content, indexed by search engines, public-facing internet.
Deep web, 2025: App. 90-95% of total web content, not indexed, includes academic databases, login portals, paywalled content, private servers.
128: Power of two, musical scale, MIDI, digital octave, binary octave, memory.
Dark web, 2025: App. 1 % of total web content, part of the deep web, behind non-indexed .onion URLs, encrypted and accessed via Tor, beyond the reach of search engines.
Active .onion sites, 2025: App. 130,000, many short-lived, ephemeral networks.
137: Fine-structure constant. Ratio of light, charge, Planck’s constant. Unresolved enigma linking quantum and cosmos, defines electromagnetic strength.
Dark web users, 2025: Estimated 2.7 million daily.
Most trafficked dark web categories: Black marketplaces, forums, whistleblowing platforms, stolen data commerce, conversation, covert info, drugs, weapons, illicit activities.
E-waste per year, 2025: 67 million ton, fastest-growing waste stream.
E-waste, 2040: Over 100 million tons per year, projected by global monitoring agencies, accelerating digital decay.
255: /255.255.255.255, network broadcast limit, message, signal sent to all, no single receiver.
CO2 from internet activity, 2025: App. 1.7 billion ton, 3.7% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Number of programming languages: Over 8,945 documented, 250 to 700 actively used in real-world development.
256: Full byte expression. Maximum in 8-bit color, 256 color possibilities, early computer screens, RGB maximum, byte-space limit. Color, sound, information.
Oldest still-used codebase: UNIX core, early 1970s, still running in servers, satellites, macOS, Linux.
Emoji count, 2025: Unicode 15.1, 3,782, standardized global pictographic language, universal symbols across platforms.
273.15: Absolute zero. Motion stops, entropy rests, matter quiet, boundary between possible and impossible heat.
Binary code: 1s and 0s, foundation of digital computation.
Grace Hopper, 1906–1992: Computer scientist. Developed first compiler for programming languages, coined debugging, after removing a moth from hardware.
First computer virus: 1971, Creeper, ARPANET, displayed I’m the creeper, catch me if you can.
360: Circle, cycle, degree. Babylonian origin, used by astronomers. Measure of rotation and return, time, compass, repetition, steering drones and planets.
First self-replicating computer program: 1962, based on von Neumann theory, code copies itself, early digital lifeform.
Chatbots in use, 2025: App. 1.5–2 billion active agents, embedded in websites, apps, homes etc.
Deepfake videos created per day, 2025: App. 22,000, synthetic media using facial mapping and voice cloning, ongoing concern for misinformation, digital trust, truth, reality, I saw it.
404: Error, nothing found. Errors per day app. 100–200 million.
AI-generated images per day, 2025: App. 3.4 × 10^7 / 34,000,000 / 34 million, created through diffusion models and generative networks across platforms.
Floppy disks: Still used in some nuclear systems, legacy tech stability.
Oldest working computer: 1949, Harwell Dekatron, nicknamed Witch.
432: Resonant frequency. Harmonic tuning standard. Sound associated with calm. Cathedral bells, cosmic background noise.
Arecibo message, 1974: 1,679 binary bits sent to M13 star cluster 25,000 light-years away, first intentional radio transmission to potential extraterrestrials.
Breakthrough Listen Project, 2015: Scanning 100 galaxies and 1 million stars for signals.
Slime mold computers: Solve mazes, avoid light, optimize routes through organic computation, mushrooms demonstrate electrical patterns akin to memory.
512: Hidden layer size in early neural networks, AI. Expansion step between simplicity and emergence.
DNA computers: Use chemical reactions to encode and process information, solving problems through molecular interaction.
False Signal: Symbol of imitation, recursion, and error. Patterns of manipulation and simulation recur in digital systems, from misinformation to algorithmic feedback and hacking. In digital culture, fake news and false signals generate the illusion of meaning through systemic error or deliberate manipulation.
Liquid computers: Experimental systems where data propagates as ripples through fluid, logic performed in motion.
Lava lamps: Unpredictable wax flow, entropy in motion, source of randomised number generation for cryptography and security.
1,024: 2¹⁰. One kilobyte, early unit of digital measure, baseline of information storage, smallest count in binary memory.
Computation via soap bubbles: Physical optimisation process, bubbles form minimal surfaces that reveal shortest paths.
Time crystals in quantum computing: Phase of matter that repeats in time rather than space, exhibits exceptional stability, potential use for durable qubits.
Robot sleep: Not required, sometimes simulated for empathy and human resemblance.
Forgotten file formats: 1,500+. Examples: .wks, .sid, .real, .cwk, .rm, zoo, .ra, .wma, .rmvb, .swf.
1,024³: 2³⁰, one gigabyte, container of digital memory, scaled unit of storage, standard capacity of the early 21st century.
Internet Archive, saved pages, 2025: App. 928 billion.
AI emotion datasets: Research projects and companies use large-scale facial and vocal data to train machines to recognise and simulate human affect, modelling expression as pattern recognition.
Number of satellites orbiting Earth, 2025: App. 8,800 active, tens of thousands defunct or fragmented.
Robot citizenship: Sophia, Saudi Arabia, 2017, first official robot citizen.
10¹⁴: Synaptic connections in a human brain, scale of internal communication.
Number of AI therapy apps, 2025: 100+.
Ethical frameworks for AI, 2025: Asimov’s laws, EU AI Act, open letters, no global standard yet.
Carrington Event, 1859: First recorded geomagnetic storm, solar flare destroyed telegraphs and disrupted global communication.
Y2K bug cost: App. 500 USD billion fix, global fear of clocks forgetting time.
10²³: Avogadro scale, number reference for atomic counting, one mole = 6.022 × 10²³ atoms, invisible quantity made standard.
Earth’s magnetic field flips: Every app. 200,000 to 300,000 years, last flip was 780,000 years ago, statistically overdue.
Average smartphone photos stored per person, 2025: 2,100+, 95% never viewed again.
Estimated total digital photos ever taken: App. 1.5 × 10^13 / 15,000,000,000,000 / 15 trillion, 90% taken in the last 10 years.
10¹²⁰: Bits required to simulate known universe. Information limit for physical reality.
Signal delay from Earth to Mars: 5 to 20 min.
Average lifespan of a webpage: App. 100 days before alteration, deletion, or link rot.
Data created globally per day, 2025: App. 328 million terabytes, equal to 3.28e+20 bytes, or 82 million HD movies daily.
Infinity: Not a number, NaN, ≠, eternity. ∞ symbol invented by John Wallis 1655. Boundary condition of thought and number. Aleph, set theory, hierarchy of infinities, overflow, regress, every reason needs another reason, afterlife, quantum fields. Infinite captcha, infinite password attempts lockout disabled. Unicode U+221E, ASCII extended 236, never reached, not measurable.