For older adults, it’s a blast from the past. For young people, it’s a chance to learn about how far we’ve come.

It’s the new exhibit at the Beaumier Upper Peninsula Heritage Center on the campus of Northern Michigan University.

“From Chalk to Light Boards: Technology at NMU” features technical equipment that was once state of the art, but now seems like clunky fossils. Items like manual typewriters, Macintosh computers and large, cumbersome tape recorders are part of the exhibit.

Unveiled on Saturday, the exhibit features dozens of artifacts from the Beaumier’s collection as well as campus offices and storage facilities were unveiled to the public.

The exhibition’s purpose? To examine how campus technology is used at NMU today and where it is headed.

The Beaumier Center is the repository of all NMU artifacts, said Dan Truckey, Beaumier curator and director in a Tuesday story by Staff Writer Christie Bleck.

“We have tons of technology that we have in our storage, and so for years we’ve been talking about, ‘We should do an exhibit about technology on campus,'” Truckey said. “Originally we were looking at scientific equipment, but then we expanded it to look at media, entertainment and various aspects of student life, and computers and audiovisual, and also looking where things are going now.”

For older folks, the exhibit will be a trip down memory lane. For those younger people who have been tech-savvy seemingly since birth, the exhibit will demonstrate an evolution that has changed the world in many ways.

We highly recommend all ages check it out.

The Beaumier is open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday. The exhibition will run through June 1.