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Founder of Bozeman Museum of Computers and Robotics dies

Posted at 11:48 AM, Nov 21, 2018
and last updated 2018-11-21 13:49:06-05

BOZEMAN, Mont. – The founder of Bozeman’s Museum of Computers and Robotics has died.

George Keremedjiev died after unsuccessful heart surgery last weekend.

The museum is the world’s longest continuously operating museum devoted to computer history.

Keremedjiev founded a consulting firm that specialized in helping manufacturing companies improve quality through better training and the use of robotics. He advised firms around the world, many of them fortune 500 companies.

He was born in Venezuela of parents who fled the Soviet Union after World War Two.  The family moved to the United States in 1962 where Keremedjiev graduated first in his high school class and won a full engineering scholarship to Rutgers.

Keremedjiev founded his Bozeman Museum in 1990. It features some of the last surviving examples of vintage computer hardware, but he told us recently that it serves as much more than a repository for rare artifacts.

“The museum is not so much about the past as where all of this is going to go,” Keremedjiev said. “But the only way to understand that is by turning your head backwards a little bit and seeing the progression of technology.”

The museum’s website says it will remain closed through the end of the year.

The funeral for Keremedjiev is Friday at 2 pm at Pilgrim Congregational Church off South Third Avenue in

Keremedjiev’s obituary can be found here.