alt Hacker NewsFavorite Tech Museums
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Some more
- Cambridge Centre for Computing History - https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/
- London Museum for Science - Babbage's Difference Engine https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/charles...
- National Museum of Computing (near Bletchley Park Museum) https://www.tnmoc.org/
- Bletchley Park Museum https://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/
- Manchester Museum (Manchester Baby) https://www.scienceandindustrymuseum.org.uk/whats-on/meet-ba...
I visited these all last year in a single trip to the UK and it was incredible. I can recommend it to anyone who has spent some time thinking about the history of computing.
No mention of Deutsches Museum in Munich? Whaat!?
https://www.deutsches-museum.de/
Also recommended:
Arithmeum Bonn: https://www.arithmeum.uni-bonn.de/
Miniaturwunderland Hamburg: https://www.miniatur-wunderland.de/ (not really a tech museum but definitely of interest to techies)
In Switzerland:
Technorama in Winterthur: https://www.technorama.ch/
Verkehrshaus Luzern: https://www.verkehrshaus.ch/
The System Source museum in Hunt Valley, Maryland is also worth a mention. I attended a demonstration of a revived Bendix G-15 there.
One of the many reasons to visit Pembrokeshire, Wales:
Lots of running kit you can get close to or hands on with e.g. 4000hp jet generators, telephone exchanges, steam engines etc. plus knowledgeable and passionate staff.
Well worth a couple of hours detour to check out.
The Kyoto Railway Museum (https://www.kyotorailwaymuseum.jp/en/) is certainly worth a mention. Tons of well-preserved examples of Japanese rolling stock, including multiple generations of Shinkansen (including the first!). Their technical explanations of every part of the train were also incredibly well done, with lots of examples from parts of real trains. It was one of the most impressive and genuinely educational technical museums I've ever been to.
Having been to both the National Railway Museum in Taipei and the Kyoto Railway Museum and comparing the two, I'd say that the former was particularly strong in areas around train maintenence, whereas the latter had much more content about trains themselves.
I will stick my oar in for the Large Scale Systems Museum just north of Pittsburgh, PA, in New Kensington (which is where the modern aluminum smelting process was invented), with their simple website at https://www.mact.io/ .
They have DEC PDP11 and VAX, SGI, Sun, IBM mainframe and midrange, Data General (apparently the same terminal setup as used in Severance), a Cray J90, etc. And it all works and you can sit down and type on the systems. If you want to take the 45 minutes it takes to boot an IBM mainframe - you can do it. I know some of the people there, they are top-notch restorers and know the hardware and software very well.
The Museum of Science and Industry (Chicago).
One of the big classics. It once contained exhibits from major manufacturers. US Steel, General Electric, RCA. AT&T, IBM, Whirlpool, International Harvester, the Santa Fe Railroad... Most of the corporate sponsorship is gone, it's more "educational", and it costs $30 instead of being free.
Museum of Broadcast Communications (Chicago).
This was once impressive, and now it's closed with the artifacts in storage. It had much early TV studio equipment. Their nostalgia exhibit, pre-Internet, was that they had a huge library of TV shows on VHS tapes, and you could request that one be played for you.
I visited the Science History Institute in Philadelphia when it was still the Chemical Heritage Foundation museum. They had a fascinating collection; hopefully it’s intact. I remember seeing lots of material from the history of plastics.
A lot of amazing recommendations well worth the visit.
The one that's missing is my favorite one though: the sister museums in Sinsheim and Speyer: https://sinsheim.technik-museum.de/en/
They have both Concorde and Tu-144, the full interior of a 747 and a big space exhibit, including the Buran space orbiter. Last year they added a submarine to the collection, next to a massive amount of other exhibits.
GAMM in Rome is quite fun (Italy):
Shout-out to the museum of Ancient Greek technology, with their wine automaton (Athens, Greece): https://kotsanas.com/
I’d add the following:
- Kyoto Railway Museum (you can ride a passenger train pulled by a real steam locomotive)
- Central Air Force Museum in Monino near Moscow (you can visit Tu-144 and Il-62 passenger cockpits, as well as check out other rather exotic aircraft)
If you're in the north of England the Derby Computer Museum is nicely maintained and presented. Exhibits are pre-2000.
Nothing comes even close to the Computer History Museum in Moutainview, CA.
On my bucket list is a two weeks trips to spend there. For me it is the world’s only epicenter of start to finish of all technologies. So many precious pieces no matter big or small, from Japan or like the Zuse, from Germany - I cannot get enough of it, especially the people you can meet there.
Founders, builders, billionaires as everyday Joe doing maintenance or giving talks - this is so much better than any ebook there is and also time runs, if you start to find out about the mechanical IBM machines, and especially the the smell there, which was a revelation.
Nevertheless kudos to any Electronics Museum or Automobile Museums. It takes a lot of dedication and maintenance to build these museums for us.
Thanks a lot, this is my Disney World on steroids, my childhood playground.
Transport museum in Dresden is really nice, especially for kids. Computer game museum in Berlin is kind of disappointing IMO - it's mostly non-interactive, which is a huge missed opportunity given the subject
Amazing collection of locks at the Mossman Lock Museum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Mossman_Lock_Museum
Computer History Museum in Mountain View CA
Deutsches Museum in Munich
Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix
Deutsches Museum in Munich
The Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation in Waltham, Massachusetts (https://www.charlesrivermuseum.org/) is a nice local technology museum if you're in the area. Not a huge place, but tells a nice little bit of the story of the industrial revolution in New England.
Center of Science and Industry in Columbus, OH - https://cosi.org/
Not a tech museum, per se, but I think it will appeal to the tech museum crowd.
When I saw aresluna I hoped this website (also due to Marcin Wichary) finally got updated
It's been 20 years...
Parasite Museum in Tokyo: https://www.kiseichu.org/e-top
Technorama in Winterthur
Museum of Play in Rochester NY
I’d also tack on National Videogame Museum in Frisco, TX to your lists.
I'd add the Henry Ford Museum in Michigan, and the Air and Space Museum (both sites). They are not as up-close-and-personal as some of the ones mentioned in the article, owing to the extreme number of visitors, but have some utterly unique and historic artifacts, like Thomas Edison's lab.
Explora Science Center and Children's Museum of Albuquerque
One more list for the privileged who can travel around the world
The InfoAge museum in New Jersey seems to not be well known, but they have lots of interesting computer and radio artifacts, including some hands-on demonstrations. The museum is on the site of an old Marconi shore station.
https://www.infoage.org/exhibits/
Which reminds me, another shore station is KPH in Point Reyes which is worth a visit for sure.
https://www.nps.gov/pore/planyourvisit/kph_treetunnel.htm