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Perhaps if museums for kids were better tailored for interactive education instead of going through and being told to read each sign and label students would care. Maybe times have changed and that's how it generally is today, I hope that's true.

If you are in Munich, try the Deutsches Museum. No museum in Germany gets visited more. And it's darned educational. I spent a week in it as a child, and now I am Anonymous Coward, the most prolific poster on Slashdot.

...where you can't get gas easily....

Like WWII Germany.

You didn't specify continent, so:

http://www.deutsches-museum.de/

Great choice of museum. Does it have a geography section? If so, try looking up if the specified locations of "US and Canada" might imply a continent in some way.

Oh wait, maybe you mean Munich, North Dakota?

You didn't specify continent, so:

http://www.deutsches-museum.de/

"I couldn't see this doing much for manned flight, but most of what we send up isn't manned anyway. It could also have some pretty kick ass millitary application, say for dramatically increasing the payload of current rocket propelled artillery rounds."

Funnily enough, studies about that go back a long way, circa 1930. dr.Sanger eventually studied a Ramjet powered design, a model of which is in the Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany. It would have been a cheaper alternative to the Space Shuttle, with a mother vehicle starting from a plain aerodrome and an orbital vehicle piggybacking on it. Basically the mother vehicle is the same concept inferred for the mysterious project Aurore Recce aircraft.

The military have always been attracted to these concepts, witness the Dynasoar in the late fifties, but the rationale is the same for civilian uses; higher efficiency and flexibility in bringing payloads in low earth orbit or suborbital flight.

The only Cray-I I've ever seen up close is the one at Deutsches Museum in Munich. It's actually quite comfortable to sit on, and the insides (at least right behind the panels, some of which have been replaced with clear plastic sheets) seem to contain nothing mecchanical (here's a photo of the museum's Cray). Might get a bit warm if you sit on tere while it's powered on, though :p

The only Cray-I I've ever seen up close is the one at Deutsches Museum in Munich. It's actually quite comfortable to sit on, and the insides (at least right behind the panels, some of which have been replaced with clear plastic sheets) seem to contain nothing mecchanical (here's a photo of the museum's Cray). Might get a bit warm if you sit on tere while it's powered on, though :p

I've been to the Deutsches Museum. It's an engineer's dream museum. They have exhibits on all sorts science and engineering subjects.

The place is absolutely huge: you'd probably need a week to go through it all if you looked at everything. I just saw the Computer Science section (very cool) and it took at least half a day to go through.

I strongly recommend paying it a visit if you're ever in Munich, even if you don't spend much time there.

Wow, I visited their website and just now and I found a list of all the exhibits they have there. There are far more than I realized.

I've been to the Deutsches Museum. It's an engineer's dream museum. They have exhibits on all sorts science and engineering subjects.

The place is absolutely huge: you'd probably need a week to go through it all if you looked at everything. I just saw the Computer Science section (very cool) and it took at least half a day to go through.

I strongly recommend paying it a visit if you're ever in Munich, even if you don't spend much time there.

Wow, I visited their website and just now and I found a list of all the exhibits they have there. There are far more than I realized.

They have so much geeky stuff there you could spend three or four days there and still not appreciate it all. There's captions to most things in English, so you don't have to speak German to get a lot out of the place.

Interesting, this story reminded me of the Jacquard Loom. The Jacquard Loom used punch cards to control the designs it embroidered into clothing material.

Herman Hollerith was hired to automate the 1890 US Census because it was apparent that information processing techniques simply weren't keeping up with the burgeoning US population. When it came time to do the 1890 census, they weren't yet finished processing teh previous census.

When Hollerith encountered the Jacquard loom and realized the significance of its punch card method he realized that he had stumbled on a method for automating the input of information for later processing.

He then took his information processing techniques and founded the Hollerith Corporation. This company later underwent a name change and eventually came to dominate in the computing field.

A geniune mine shaft dug underneath the museum, that cronicals the modernisation of mining as you progress.

Other highlights: technical toys, a BWM robot, and the the first jet aircraft to be produced in quantity the Messerschmitt Me 262

A geniune mine shaft dug underneath the museum, that cronicals the modernisation of mining as you progress.

Other highlights: technical toys, a BWM robot, and the the first jet aircraft to be produced in quantity the Messerschmitt Me 262

A geniune mine shaft dug underneath the museum, that cronicals the modernisation of mining as you progress.

Other highlights: technical toys, a BWM robot, and the the first jet aircraft to be produced in quantity the Messerschmitt Me 262

A geniune mine shaft dug underneath the museum, that cronicals the modernisation of mining as you progress.

Other highlights: technical toys, a BWM robot, and the the first jet aircraft to be produced in quantity the Messerschmitt Me 262

Science and engeneering museum in the world is the Deutsches Museum in Munich. This is the old-school geeks' Louvre. It's massive, a mind numbing amount of exibits that would take days to see.

The Deutsches Museum in Munich is full of cool hardware and technology. Old medieval ships, WWII machines, modern airplanes, automobiles, the whole shebang. Very fun, especially if you're into machinery and engineering.

I don't know whether you have the time and money for the trip, but a very good recommendation (worldwide) is the German Museum of Technologies in Munich (Deutsches Museum). They have a very extensive coverage of computer sciences beginning with simple mechanical caluclators like the ones of Leibniz and Pascal over the (working!) Zuse Z3 (a 1945 computer) up to the modern developments of today's microprocessors (but not operating systems or software).

Very interesting is to take a guide and have it all explained to you. There is also a book available at the museum store, which can possibly be ordered online and in English (Publications (German)).

Possibly there is also a museum about history of sciences somewhere in the U.S., but if you plan a trip to Europe anyway, the German Museum of Technologies is definately worth the time for you.

Sebastian

I don't know whether you have the time and money for the trip, but a very good recommendation (worldwide) is the German Museum of Technologies in Munich (Deutsches Museum). They have a very extensive coverage of computer sciences beginning with simple mechanical caluclators like the ones of Leibniz and Pascal over the (working!) Zuse Z3 (a 1945 computer) up to the modern developments of today's microprocessors (but not operating systems or software).

Very interesting is to take a guide and have it all explained to you. There is also a book available at the museum store, which can possibly be ordered online and in English (Publications (German)).

Possibly there is also a museum about history of sciences somewhere in the U.S., but if you plan a trip to Europe anyway, the German Museum of Technologies is definately worth the time for you.

Sebastian

STMs are so neat. It's one of those ideas you look at and think "no way could that work". It's just several piezoelectric actuators, like those in cheap high-pitched buzzers, glued together at right angles, with a pointed needle on the end. The business end is brought close to a surface until there's some leakage current across the gap, and then it's raster-scanned in 2D while servoing the height to keep the leakage current constant. The height servo value is the output. It's simple, small, and cheap, compared to, say, an electron microscope. A STM could have been built with 1950s technology, but nobody thought to try it. It just didn't seem reasonable that you could sense individual atoms with a pointed needle moved around by a mechanical actuator.

According to the Deutsches Museum Enigma Page (in English), between 100,000 and 200,000 Enigma machines were built during World War II.
The Polish were breaking Enigma ciphers as early as December 1932 and January 1933, as mentioned in passing here - in fact it was Polish dissidents that delivered an Enigma to Bletchley Park.
This page has some recent Enigma selling prices in case you want to start saving up for one (prices start around $15000).
I wonder what's so special about the stolen one, and why there's only three of that type remaining...

Anyone who wants to see this sort of stuff live (and happens to be passing through Munich) should definitely check out the Deutsches Museum, Germany's largest technical museum. I highly recommend their exhibits in any case, but they run daily high-voltage shows.

Anyone who wants to see this sort of stuff live (and happens to be passing through Munich) should definitely check out the Deutsches Museum, Germany's largest technical museum. I highly recommend their exhibits in any case, but they run daily high-voltage shows.