Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Science Museum: Lots of cool stuff


There's lots of other cool stuff at the museum. A functioning model of a 19th century industrial workshop.


Printing presses. At least one looked like it was well maintained and should be functional.


A large space travel exhibit, including the moon lander.


A section on materials, where I found this sword made from Damascus steel. The Wikipedia article has a short section on new research pointing at nano tubes as an explanation for why these swords were so sharp and sturdy.


A large exhibition on all kinds of watches from small pocket watches all the way up to the clockwork installed in 1392 at the Wells Cathedral, which was refurbished in the 1600's for more accuracy ... and still works.


There is a section on agriculture, explaining various types of plows.


A large hall on the history of flight. We're standing below a Harrier fighter, a plane that fascinated me when I was a kid.


There is Babbage's Difference Engine, a predecessor of the modern computer, built to the original plans with Victorian technology in 1991.


While I don't believe that the floppy disks are still readable, the Information Age hall has a copy of Windows 1.0 (and 3.1 as well).


The Information Age hall was interesting in that it combined the various kinds of communication over time (telegraph, radio, telephone, computers, TV) into a coherent story. Here is a Marconi transmitter from the 1920's.


Funny enough, there is a Google Street View trike, too.


The museum was bristling with school kids on excursion going through work sheets, listening to docents, or their teachers. I somewhat rushed through the museum (today's a work day after all), but still spent a couple hours here. Very interesting and fun start of the day.

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