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Don't you know anything, the ring was melted down to nothing in the fires of Mt. Doom. It's no longer a threat.

Then how come the Lidless Eye is still open?

I assume that the exhibit will be American, so:

...so, just have a TV? :-p

More seriously, why not visit a couple of existing museums with good exhibits for children and see what they do? I visited Universeum in Gothenburg a few weeks ago, and that had excellent interactive things for children (click "Exhibitions"). I saw kids really enjoying the interactive music stuff. Closer to (my) home, the London Transport Museum's train simulator was good for slightly older children. I can't remember anything directly involving a computer that was suitable for really young children, although one room had about 8 under-fives chasing animations (of a train) that were projected onto the floor.

With a bit of imagination you can get something interactive and technical without any risk to the computer. Use heat/light sensors to detect where people are, projected sound and/or light.

However, designing this stuff is a profession in itself so you might be better off getting some advice that way.

* Get yourself an Oyster Card - you can get one from the tube stations at Heathrow Airport and are valid on most public transport in London including all Underground (tube) trains, all local (red) buses in London, some "overground" (i.e. not tube) trains (from 2nd Jan 2010 almost all trains in London will take it) and some river-boat services (the river boats are not cheap but can be a great way to see the sights along the river). You have to pay a £3 deposit plus whatever credit you'll want to start with, but you can get that back plus any unused credit by surrending the card at a tube station when you leave.

* If you're flying into Heathrow and you don't have too much luggage, then the tube to central London is by far the cheapest option. There are also two "overground" rail services, the non-stop Heathrow Express (15 mins to central London) and the stops-at-local-stations Heathrow Connect (25 mins to central London). Both are rather more expensive than the tube, the Express especially so, and neither take Oyster. There used to be an Airbus services from Heathrow to central London but that stopped a few years ago. National Express run some coach (long distance bus) services to/from central London that call at Heathrow but they will be the slowest option and you may need to book your tickets in advance.

* If flying in to Gatwick, then your best choice is rail to London. There are two services: Gatwick Express is a bit more expensive but faster and has more luggage space. Southern is likely to be a bit cheaper and not quite as fast. Be aware that although the two services are run by the same company, tickets on one may not be valid on the other. Neither will take Oyster as Gatwick is well outside the city boundary of Greater London. In the unlikey event you fly into Stansted (which doesn't have many flights to/from North America) then the same applies to the Stansted Express rail link. There are cheapish coach links from Gatwick and Stansted but they will be a lot slower.

* Wherever you fly into, DON'T take a taxi into London unless you really need to and have LOTS of money! Having said that, if you're not sure how to get to a particular place, London cabbies have to spend several years learning "The Knowledge" and will always be able to get you to where you want to go, for a price.

* I second the motion to go to Bletchley Park. This is outside of London but only about 45 minutes from Euston railway terminus by train. It is an absolute must see for any geek: not only does it have working replicas of the Turing "Bombe" and Colossus machines, but it has subsidiary museums on site of computing and other technology.

* Amberley Chalk Pits museum in Sussex might be of interest to you too, with displays of agricultural and industrial technology, transport and communications (TV and radio museums). It's about an hour and a half from Victoria railway terminus.

* If you're interested in transport, then the London Transport museum at Covent Garden in the centre of London is a must see.

* If you do travel outside of London by train, then unless you're going long distance (more than a couple of hours from London) you won't need t

Definitely ... taking the water taxi from Embankment to Greenwich is something my mother always does when she visits. It's a great way to see the sites of London.

I'll add my voice to the chorus for the Science Museum, and also the Natural History Museum. No geek should avoid going to these two! The British Museum is great fun, too.

Overall, it largely depends on what sort of geeky things you go for. Check out Pollock's Toy Museum if you're into games and construction toys. If you're into trains, check out the London Transport Museum. If you're into military, there's the Imperial History Museum, or the Royal Air Force Museum. The Design Museum is pretty cool, too. If you're into history, checkout the Museum of London, which is a history of the city. Also, the Victoria and Albert Museum is also pretty interesting. More about arts and crafts, though.

Otherwise, there's also loads of art stuff, like Tate Modern, the National Gallery ...

Have fun!

Heh. I'm resisting the temptation to link to all the streetcar-related stuff on my blog yet again.

Actually, we did streetcars first. They copied us. The first European streetcars were in London and they depended on having experts come over from New York to get it done. I just dropped by the London Transport Museum last year and was surprised how much American expertise their stuff pointed to. That having been said, most streetcars are waaay louder and less optimized than they could be. Here in Portland ours are very quiet. I doubt that you would have a problem with them. But even those certainly have room for improvement. Rather than suggesting that we use buses, which are inherently less energy efficient, howsabout we take one tenth of the money currently poured into designing new cars and put it into better streetcar designs? As demand is heating up, this is happening already, actually, so we can look to see better designs ahead of us.

Why are streetcars inherently more efficient than buses? Two points: First of all, remember all the things you've heard about increasing your energy efficiency by increasing the pressure in your tires? By, basically, making them harder? Well, care to guess how much harder a steel wheel is than a rubber one? Secondly, streetcars don't carry their fuel with them. Instead of carrying not only all that fuel but also typically a combustion engine and all its associated doodads to burn it with as most buses do, a streetcar has little, lightweight electric motors. And, of course, just by not having to bear the weight of the motors and fuel, the electric drives have that much less mass to move around. I see your point about electric buses but those range and maintenance issues you pointed to are very big deals and batteries are HEAVY.

As for "our power, phone and cable still run from overground wooden poles" I couldn't agree more that this is a problem. Maybe we should do something about that while we're addressing all the rest, hmmm?

We've got a fundamental issue with cross-vehicle efficiency here that I think deserves a bit more attention. Whatever our reasons for doing so, the U.S. decided to blow off most rail technologies years before WWII. Ever since, the combustion engine and vehicles that run on them have been at the center of our lives and those of everybody around the world in our orbit. Because of that, astounding amounts of money and brains have gone into making them better for over sixty years now. I think that it's important to remember that when we compare streetcars to buses, let alone cars, we're comparing the results of billions of dollars worth of investment and attention, most of it, let us note, not by the car companies, against a vehicle that has been sitting around getting comparatively no attention since the days when horses handled many deliveries and television was still a laboratory curiosity.
That having been said, of course most streetcars will be louder. In term of technological investment, you're comparing a 286 to a brand new Macintosh, right down to the fancy case design and huge marketing campaign. But there is no reason that we need to keep spending our R&D resources that way. Quite the contrary.
So whenever you sit down to think about good approaches from here on out, just remember, mass transit in particular and many sustainable technologies overall have been pissed on and pushed aside for generations. If you want to understand what they can do in coming years, you're going to need to cut them some slack.

Yeah, I remember reading about that guy. They used his methods to tunnel under the Thames in London, I think. His method was a little different, though. The Greathead method used a big iron cylinder open at one end, with an airtight door at the other. The open end would be forced into the soft ground with hydraulic rams, and the airtight door kept the whole tunnel from being flooded if the mud-wall inside collapsed and let water through. Not a safe job, digging inside a Greathead cylinder...

I highly recommend the London Transport Museum, but probably not for the reasons train buffs (railfans?) would suggest. It's a spectacular repository for historical graphic design . . . .