Between 5-7 July, the Snibston Discovery Museum in Coalville (Leicestershire) will host a pioneering festival to celebrate the age of micro-chips with a display of vintage computers (http://www.silicondreams.org.uk/).

The idea of Silicon Dreams and a festival of retro computers was born in the Silicon Valley in 1997. The initiative aimed to launch an international event to celebrate and recall the history of computing.

Since then, “Vintage Computer Festival” (http://www.vintage.org/) has been held in a number of places all over the world, the first one in Europe was staged in Munich in 2000. One to three such events are organised annually with this name. The United Kingdom debuted with Vintage Computer Festival in 2010 organised by the National Museum of Computing (http://www.tnmoc.org/) and Bletchley Park (http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/).

The second festival on the way is special as the focus of the even has been expanded, and in addition to retro computing devices, various exhibitors and museums will also present new projects such as Raspberry Pi (http://www.raspberrypi.org/) or contemporary electronic music.