There were three main motivational drivers for founding the Computer Conservation Society as a joint co-operative venture of the Science Museum and the British Computer Society. These were the: restoration to working order of historic computing machines for public display; provision of an organisational context for the expertise of computer designers and practitioners with unique knowledge of historic machines; capture, documentation and preservation of computing knowhow. Computer restoration, public display, and the notion of a ‘club’ were essential features of the original conception. Preservation and social utility were inseparably joined from the start. This paper reviews nearly 25 years of activity in pursuit of these aims.