Numerical Artifacts Museum - Information Pratique

Computer Museum NAM-IP is Belgium's first museum dedicated entirely to the history of computing, located in Namur. Housed on Rue Henri Blès, the venue spans roughly 500 square metres of exhibition space and displays over 300 objects that trace three centuries of calculating machines and computer technology.

What does the museum show?

The permanent exhibition, built around the idea of tracing the "numerical roots" of computing, guides visitors from the earliest calculating devices through Hollerith's statistical tabulating machine from the end of the 19th century, accounting machines and typewriters, and on to punch-card mechanography. Later rooms present the first computers installed in Belgium during the 1960s, followed by the personal computers of the 1980s and 1990s that reshaped how millions of people worked and lived.

Where does the collection come from?

The museum's holdings amount to roughly a thousand objects, brought together from four separate Belgian collections. Two of them originate from industrial groups that played a historically important role in Belgium: the Bull-FEBB collection and the Unisys Computer Museum collection. A third collection, called "Informatique et bible," documents one significant historical application of computing, while the fourth, the Computing Systems collection, comes from a private collector specialising in computer systems. The museum's stated mission is to preserve technological heritage at risk of disappearing and to pass that knowledge on to younger generations.

How is the visit organised?

Visitors are offered two possible routes through the exhibits. The first is chronological, placing successive technical and technological innovations along a historical timeline so that visitors can see how one invention led to the next. The second route is organised around the individual collections themselves, highlighting the different backgrounds and areas of focus of the donors behind them.

Frequently asked questions

Where is Computer Museum NAM-IP located? The museum is in Namur, in Wallonia, at Rue Henri Blès 192A.

How many objects are on display? The permanent exhibition features more than 300 items selected from around a thousand objects held across the museum's four collections.

What period of history does the exhibition cover? The exhibition spans three centuries, from 19th-century calculating machines through the first computers installed in Belgium in the 1960s to personal computers from the late 20th century.

Is this the first museum of its kind in Belgium? Yes, Computer Museum NAM-IP is Belgium's first museum devoted entirely to the history of computing and digital technology.

Who is the museum for? With both a chronological route and a collection-based route on offer, the museum appeals to technology history enthusiasts as well as visitors looking for a lighter, family-friendly outing in Namur.