A video game from the 1980s, which was dug up from a landfill in New Mexico, has found its way to the Smithsonian in Washington.
The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History has acquired one of the cartridges for E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, which was meant for the Atari 2600 and considered one of the worst video games ever made.
The vintage cartridges were excavated by archaeologists near Alamogordo, which is 320 kms southeast of Albuquerque in New Mexico. It is not known who dumped the video games, which coincided with the release of Spielberg's 1982 movie.
Why, after more than three decades, would a prestigious museum be interested in a video game cartridge? The object is representative of the video game crash of the 1980s, where E.T. the game played a pivotal role. This factor makes it an integral aspect of America's technological history.
"The Smithsonian is no hall of fame -- it's our job to share the complicated technological, cultural, and social history of any innovation, including video games," explained Drew Robarge, Smithsonian's technical director, on the Smithsonian blog. "Unearthed from a landfill, the object personifies the video game crash that took place from 1982 to 1985."
Robarge asked the producers of Microsoft, who were making a documentary on the excavations, to give him a copy of the video game, which is a "defining artifact of the crash," for the Smithsonian, if they found one. Microsoft obliged once several cartridges were excavated.
Earlier this year, several excavated E.T. video game cartridges were sold online on eBay by Alamogordo, which was the site of the landfill.
The E.T. cartridge joins an extensive collection at Smithsonian, which include famous objects connected with American history, such as Abraham Lincoln's hat, which he wore on the night he was assassinated, and the original sheet music for "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" from the Wizard of Oz.
The Smithsonian has not announced when the unearthed copy of the E.T. video game will be added to the exhibits for public viewing. However, the museum says it will store the vintage video game in its Video History Collection.
