I really liked that place. I vacationed to Seattle and I saw it the same day as the Connections Museum, which is exceptionally fantastic.
Old telecom switches, some over 100 years old, still fully operational. The guided tour was just extraordinary. https://www.telcomhistory.org/connections-museum-seattle/
They have multiple phones hooked up to these old switches. After explaining the machine the tour guide picked up a handset, dialed a number and you'd hear "clickety clickety whir whir" and see these mechanical bars move around and the other phone would start ringing. You'd pick it up and have a conversation. Really magnificent. They had two 1960s video phones and you could have a conversation across the room.
There's a constant humming of belts and mechanical clicking, it's this really unique and distinct experience. Not many people were there the day I went so it was just me and a friend on what felt like a private tour. Very intimate. The guide was an old homebrew computing club member, extremely competent.
Also if this is your thing, Berlin has a computer gaming museum which is also amazing called Computerspielemuseum.
The living computer museum was just too good to be true. I hope it comes back. They had a Xerox Alto and an Apple 1 you could use. Just walk up and start typing away.
I had read a lot about the Xerox machines but I never used one. So it was just extraordinary to try all the things I've read about, it was like meeting a celebrity. The kludgy copy and paste before dragging was "invented", the VisiOn style menus, the clunky scrolling without scrollbars, all there.
They even encouraged you to program on punch cards to feed into some 1960s era machines they had running, including a CDC super computer. Or you could go use Unix on a teletype terminal and see the reams of paper pass by.
I had read Tracy Kiddals Soul of a New Machine about the Data General Eagle Computer, but I never thought I'd see one in person, just sitting there waiting for me to interact with it.
Or that I'd ever have a chance to just lounge on the couch of a Cray XMP.
The only things missing were foreign machines. No acorn or omron or any of the Soviet clones but if you set that aside, just great (unless there was a room off to the side dedicated to them that I missed... Quite possible)
As long as I'm plugging museums here's my short list: Imperial War Museum and the British Library, London, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City.
Every 5 feet of all of those is just shocking in what famous and wonderful artifacts they have. Philadelphia's is world class, better than the MET, better than the Smithsonian, don't pass on it if you get the opportunity
Old telecom switches, some over 100 years old, still fully operational. The guided tour was just extraordinary. https://www.telcomhistory.org/connections-museum-seattle/
They have multiple phones hooked up to these old switches. After explaining the machine the tour guide picked up a handset, dialed a number and you'd hear "clickety clickety whir whir" and see these mechanical bars move around and the other phone would start ringing. You'd pick it up and have a conversation. Really magnificent. They had two 1960s video phones and you could have a conversation across the room.
There's a constant humming of belts and mechanical clicking, it's this really unique and distinct experience. Not many people were there the day I went so it was just me and a friend on what felt like a private tour. Very intimate. The guide was an old homebrew computing club member, extremely competent.
Also if this is your thing, Berlin has a computer gaming museum which is also amazing called Computerspielemuseum.
The living computer museum was just too good to be true. I hope it comes back. They had a Xerox Alto and an Apple 1 you could use. Just walk up and start typing away.
I had read a lot about the Xerox machines but I never used one. So it was just extraordinary to try all the things I've read about, it was like meeting a celebrity. The kludgy copy and paste before dragging was "invented", the VisiOn style menus, the clunky scrolling without scrollbars, all there.
They even encouraged you to program on punch cards to feed into some 1960s era machines they had running, including a CDC super computer. Or you could go use Unix on a teletype terminal and see the reams of paper pass by.
I had read Tracy Kiddals Soul of a New Machine about the Data General Eagle Computer, but I never thought I'd see one in person, just sitting there waiting for me to interact with it.
Or that I'd ever have a chance to just lounge on the couch of a Cray XMP.
The only things missing were foreign machines. No acorn or omron or any of the Soviet clones but if you set that aside, just great (unless there was a room off to the side dedicated to them that I missed... Quite possible)
As long as I'm plugging museums here's my short list: Imperial War Museum and the British Library, London, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City.
Every 5 feet of all of those is just shocking in what famous and wonderful artifacts they have. Philadelphia's is world class, better than the MET, better than the Smithsonian, don't pass on it if you get the opportunity