Slashdot Mirror
Seeking Interesting Sites When Travelling the World?
An anonymous reader asks: "Is there anyone besides me who likes to travel and look at engineering projects? When I first read Neal Stephenson's Wired article on his trip around the world to watch an intercontinental fiber cable being built from England to Japan (still available at HotWired) I knew this was what I wanted to do with my vacation days. Space launch sites, high-speed rail lines, container ports, technology museums - I've tried them all. Does Slashdot have suggestions for destinations, or for web sites where people share their experiences."
I'd be curious to hear which of these places you found interesting, stories from your travels, etc., etc.
sPh
Does Slashdot have suggestions for destinations, or for web sites where people share their experiences."
:)
If your reading this I think you found it already
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
I'd vote for teh Chicago Museum of Science and Industry (see the everything2 node). It's cool, they have a WW2 U-Boat you can tour, the first desil-electric bullet train in the U.S., some cool airplanes, an engine from a V2 rocket, some cool old cars, a complete scale model of all the railroad connections in Chicago, and much much more...
In general, it rules, and it's only $9 to get in for the day.
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Play Six Pack Man. I
Sorry, no personal suggestions for you, but I'm glad to see that others found that article as enlightening as I did. It's been years since it was written, and I still find myself thinking about it and recommending it to others. Neal is a truly gifted author.
Canada Science and Technology Museum
I went twice this year, and it has everything from trains, to boats, to satelites.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
I know somebody who travelled all the way from Washington State to Europe just to ride a Talgo train. He wasn't amused when I pointed out Amtrack runs Talgos on the route from Eugene OR, through Portland and Seattle to Vancouver, BC. Had he done five minutes of research he would have already taken his trip to Japan for their high speed train. Or he could have skipped Spain and rode the Chunnel train.
People tend to look all over the world for what they want to see or experience without looking in their own city.
They have HUGE buildings full of stuff on all sorts of topics... It's kinda like Disney, but instead of being owned by Disney, it's owned by the Smithsonian Corporation of America. Check out the Air & Space/Star Wars ride! Good stuff.
So you want to spend days travelling to places and see interesting engineering projects? Sheesh. I'd be happy if I had the time and money to just go somewhere.
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Open Source Shirts
Don't just look at it walk across it. Walk over it! The tour guides know their stuff, they'll tell you lots of intresting things about its contruction: why it hasn't rusted away, how it supports itself, and how many rivets were used.
Some of the best money I have spent.
"Go into the hall of mirrors and have a bloody hard look at yourself" - HG Nelson
launch schedule
One scientist goes around the world tracking advances in semiconductor physics. She's hot too!
Just look out for white trucks with a 'UN' logo.
Not for anything technology related, but the food really is that good. Especially the steak.
A group of us used to do the same thing you mentioned, and we've been to their conferences and tours. One of our friends subscribed to all their newsletters and journals, and passed them around. The ads in there alone will point you to other organizations just like it. It's amazing.
I smiled while reading your description of awe-inspiring marvels of the world. I must say that being able to run a 5K race on the Great Wall of China was most amazing experience I've ever had.
1) It is a huge, huge dam. Supposed to supply something like 10% of China's electricity.
2) Unfortunately, the Three Gorges were an artistic inspiration for centuries of Chinese artists. They will be flooded, and their beauty lost. You can still see them pretty well now, but that won't be true for long.
So that trip is a twofer.
Just a thought; why not get involved with a project you're interested in and make it your job. You might not get it, but there might be some positions that involve travel that you're qualified for.
I don't know your personal situation, perhaps you have kids or something, maybe it is entirely out of the question. But if I had a nickel for every time someone suggested something "obvious" to me that I hadn't considered before...
My
Limekiller
There is more to life than technology, you know?
Franklin Institute
Well, hey, I didn't spend all those years playing Dungeons and Dragons and not learn a little something about courage.
Three Gorges Damn - before they close it up. Until then, it will be one of the most beautiful places in the world.
Trans-Siberian railroad. Just because.
Lewis and Clark Bridge, St. Charles, MO / Alton, IL. See the Nova special, Superbridge, first. And close to the Gateway Arch, too.
WTC site. Damn, that thing took hits from two jetliners and it stayed up long enough to get most (not all, alas) of the people out?
Sears Tower, Chicago.
Assembly building at KSC.
The list goes on and on.
Get a life
In August of 1999 I travelled from the US to Turkey to watch a total solar eclipse. The eclipse was fantastic, as was the subsequent travel around Turkey.
It's science, not engineering, but I recommend it just the same. Find a good one here or here
The best science museum I've ever visited is the History of Science museum in Florence, Italy. They have an incredible exhibit of Galileo's telescopes, inclined plane experiments, clocks, and (I kid you not!) his (middle) finger.
There was a massive technological undertaking to create a fabric that could withstand the forces placed upon them when I was wearing pants. I'm a bit of an anomoly with this 300 ton unit, but I get great funding from the science community when I rip another pair of pants.
you shouldn't take any slashdotter's advice without first consulting a lawyer.
Worth a visit....
;-)
The website is here
The geothermal electricity plants in New Zealand are pretty cool, they runs tours and stuff. You can also check the Echelon base at Waihopai while your there too
"Space launch sites, high-speed rail lines, container ports, technology museums - I've tried them all."
How about something more, umm, human? Like teaching computer skills to exiled people while learning a thing or two from simply being there?
Some people say it's been the most satisfying thing they ever did. A little compassion can make even everyday gadgets more amazing...
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
I am a techno geek but i have been to Machu Picchu and it was spectacular. Egpyt is next on my list as well as Japan.
But it is good to see things that were built so well with so little technology that survive today. Attesting to human intelligence and cunning. Give you a real good perspective on the world we live in now.
Much prettier than an IMAX movie, plus you are outside.
I love technology museums but the Great Wall of China would be a good thing to stroll down with my lady(plus you geeks could get some choice hentai).
I guess my point is check out something other than the electronic.
Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Space launch sites, high-speed rail lines, container ports, technology museums - I've tried them all.
Wow, what a great way to pick up women, why didn't I think of this before!!
The Malmö bridge that spans between Sweden and Denmark is quite a sight if you happen to be in Copenhagen. The best way to see it is to take a flight from SAS and look out the window, land and jump on your connecting flight.
Other engineering achievements I'd recommend would be the Petronas Towers in Malaysia (these are the tallest buildings in the world right now, and they have an interesting "bridge" between them); the Hoover Dam outside of Las Vegas, NV; and the Channel Tunnel. If you have a few million to spare, you could always contact Russia to visit the International Space Station. I'm sure other Slashdotters will think up many other sights to see...
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
Travelling around the world sure sounds interesting. But... if you stop for a moment, like right now, look at all the items in the room where you are right now. Pick a random item. I see a plastic coffee cup. Then travel in that cup. This one came from italy. It has been designed to provide some extra grip (there's some stripes in it) - there's plenty of tiny little neat things in it that have been developed to produce that very simple item. Then, think how that item reached your desk, how many steps and people have been involved in making that item transport from the manufacturing place to this desk...kids toys are good items as well, they have lots of design in it, many of them read "produced in taiwan" atleast in our case. :)
Well, I guess this is the poormans version :) and maybe it's time to catch some sleep :)
Are you looking for only HUMAN engineered sites?
Ever considered the Great Barrier Reef? The islands off the coast of Hong Kong or Malaysia?
Both are really cool feats of engineering, only Ma Nature did em. Don't limit yourself to strictly man-made stuff, you'll miss half the fun.
I envy you in your vacation. I desperately need one.
Sent from your iPad.
Just got back from an 11-day vacation in Italy with my sweetie, and I took the time to stop into the above-mentioned museum. It's a little out-of-the-way place on the eastern side of the plaza where the Ufizzi gallery is, basically facing the Arno river. Inside is a huge collection of early astrolabes, thermometers, telescopes, and everything else that Florentine scientists of the 13th-18th centuries used, along with copious explanations. Be sure to pick up the English manual on the second floor (assuming you speak English and not Italian, though if you're reading this then that's a pretty safe bet).
:-) Amen.
One particular item of interest: after Galileo died, some of his students managed to scavenge the middle finger of his right hand from the corpse when it was appropriated by the Church of the time. They preserved it, and today the remains of the finger are in a little bell jar in room 6, as I recall. The irony is that the item is arranged such that as near as I could tell, it's facing the Duomo (the major cathedral in Florence) where religious figures of the day... ahem. Let's just say that it's comforting to know that, evermore, Galileo gets to give the finger to the Church.
Really. A lot of this stuff is just where you find it -- a lot of big companies do factory tours, mine tours etc. and the local tourist info places or AAA handbooks will tell you.
I've done tours of uranium mining and milling operations, a day-long tour of Abitibi's forest products facility (from tree farm to pulp and paper mill) in northern Ontario, an iron mine in Minnesota, a (decommissioned) nuclear facility in Idaho, the Jack Daniels' distillery in Lynchburg, etc, etc -- all as side trips on touring around the country. Various conferences often have such side trips for the early arrivers before the first day of the official conference (I did a tour of the Boeing 747 assembly facility that way.)
I suppose in this post 9/11 era some of this stuff might be scaled back, and even before that some of the more interesting stuff required an organized group and advanced notice for clearance (e.g. the NORAD facility in Cheyenne Mountain, which I've toured). Best bet if there's something you're interested in is to ask their Public Relations office.
-- Alastair
for that shit??? Gimme a million dollars and I will take you to places you have not dreamt of. I will take you to abandoned russian nuclear plant.
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 . . . .
It's over now. That, or it's go time. One of the two. acts of gord
I've done both the bridge walk and the tunnel crawl (twice for the tunnel), and I have to admit that it's just about the coolest damn thing :)
And I'm going to get to drive on it in a month. ENVY ME!
> My comment can be quoted whenever, wherever, so long as you bloody well provide attribution! >
The Boeing Everett Factory (where they build the 747, 767, and 777) is absolutely awe-inspiring.
The Hoover Dam is deceptively MASSIVE.
The Eiffel Tower is a whole lot of iron!
The Leaning Tower of Pisa was actually quite terrifying before they put up the railings!! (Think about walking, 10 meters up, on wet, smooth-as-glass marble at like a 15 degree angle)
The Pyramids are one hell of an engineering feat!
And, although not human engineering, my favorite has to be Uluru. Yeah, it looks like just a big hunk 'o rock, but when you walk all the way around it, it's quite amazing how the hues change with literally every footstep.
IMO If your looking for engineering, look at the monuments in DC. Sure, they aren't high tech fiber or neato electrical stuff; the granduer required to build them took some engineering prowness.
1 tequila 2 tequila 3 tequila floor
I believe there is a computer museum in Baltimore, as well as a really awesome aquarium. It's a pretty cool place to go. Besides that, I would reccomend the "Deutsche Museum" in Muenchen (Germany). It has some really neat sections, including a section on old computers, like those that would take up the space of most of your house.
"Alle reden vom wetter. Wir nicht." - SDS Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund.
j00 4r3 3n73r1ng l337 w0r1d.
How about the Great Firewall of China?
This guy is way out there
Another location for really big stuff is strip mines; the Germans are big (pun intended) on really huge digging machines. Also, I believe the Chunnel between England and France has on display the equipment that drilled/dug it.
The ultimate, of course, would be a trip to the Space Station (at the moment it's both the largest and the smallest space station). More reachable is a trip to Biosphere 2, in Arizona.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Check out Kennecott Copper Mine near Salt Lake City, UT. Don't worry, you'll be able to find it. It's purportedly one of two man-made features on Earth visible from space with the naked eye, the other being the Great Wall of China. (I don't think they're counting reservoirs.) If you arrive at the right time of day, you can watch them blast away the hillside using tons of explosives. The entire site is crawling with huge trucks and steamshovels, trains, pipelines and the like. The complex stretches for miles and miles, and there's a lot of interesting industrial stuff to see around the area in addition to the tour itself.
Another cool tour is the Soudan Underground Mine State Park in Soudan, MN. They run you deep, deep underground in an old iron mine, and show you what it was like working a mile below the surface. That's also where the University of Minnesota built their cosmic ray detection lab.
The Titan Missile museum is the only one like it in the world -- A cold-war nuclear silo open for public tours. Setting foot on the premises before 1983 would have meant you would be shot on sight.
The rocket is still in the silo, but its been drained of fuel and the warhead disarmed. Its connected to the control room by an enormous underground corridor build out of massively reinforced steel with giant springs the size of Volkswagons to absorb the shock of a nuclear strike.
Back during the cold war, Tucson was #6 on the Soviet Union's list of strike targets due to the fact we have a major air base, and a rather large number of defense contractors. They built the silo like a couple hundred feet underground, anticipating that it would get hit by a nuke, and still function. The operator's chair in the control room is even mounted on springs and rails, to allow the guy to do his job in the event the facility got hit. You can even sit in the chair.
The tour includes the actual control room where launch codes were recieved, and the infamous red button & code book are kept. You can even push it..Doing so before 1983 would have meant a couple million people would die..
The tour also requires you to wear a hard-hat. You'll need it. I hit my head on a friggin support girder.
Cheers,
Bowie
Bowie J. Poag
If you haven't been to Yosemite National Park in the United States, you absolutely must. A couple of years ago, I went the last week of November for a few days. The beautiful part...no on there...the next best beautiful part...most of the people that were there were not Americans.
I was lucky enough to find a small cadre of folks that were there just for the sheer wonder of the place. Mountain climbers and hard-core hikers. Now, I'm a fat-arsed computer programmer, but I still made it to the top of Yosemite Falls. Got some great pictures.
Also, try not to drive into the valley if you don't have to. It cuts down on pollution to have less cars there, plus, those granite walls are so amazing that it's too hard not to just stop in the middle of the road and look...
17 mile long bridge / tunnel
Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel
.. to see the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpor
And 90% of what you've said has nothing to do with the question. Post your rants somewhere else.
"Alle reden vom wetter. Wir nicht." - SDS Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund.
j00 4r3 3n73r1ng l337 w0r1d.
If we are going in this vein then I would have to suggest Angkor wat, in Cambodia. It has been described as one of the most amazing structures concieved by the human mind. For something more moddern you could try the petronas towers in Malaysia. Tallest buildings in the world, even if they only let you go up to the bridge. Or a bit closer to home (if you are in the US or Canida)is the CN tower and Gloden Gate bridge A bit closer to home if you are in the UK I would say Eden and the Faulkirk Weel, not to mention the london eye. All are great enginearing feets in their own right. I am sure you will get more replys that you can see in a lifetime so I will leave it there.
I just got back from Puerto Rico. One of my "must see"'s was the Arecibo Observatory
Once I spent a week in Chiang Mai, Thailand visiting a girl I was dating. When I got there they had just started building a new small restaurant near her dorm. It was finished and open for business by the time I left. I was amazed at how quickly you can build something when you don't have silly things like construction codes and inspections to worry about.
Never approach a vast undertaking with a half-vast plan.
I designed my honeymoon around a trip to the east coast of Canada so that I could see the Confederation Bridge up close, take pictures for the engineers in my family, and drive over it.
Of course I didn't tell my wife that. She saw it as an opportunity to visit the Anne of Green Gables tourist traps and see several historical sites in the area.
I'd call that a win-win situation.
However, I would like to visit the sites of some engineering failures. I would love to go and scuba dive on the old Tacoma Narrows Bridge (high currents and all).
I detest Montego Bay Jamaica as it has been destroyed be tourism, but it does have the best restaurant on the planet, "The Pork Pit". It is nothing but a circular open thatched roof bar with stool and a little outhouse lookin shack behind it. The menu? Simple, beer, pork (1/4, 1/2, and 1 lb) and hot sauce (and brother, I do mean HOT). The bury the hog and cook it the old fashioned way.
Damn fine eating, you should try it some time.
Either give it away or get top dollar, but never sell yourself cheap.
You should visit Sealand/Havenco...but I bet it is tough to get a guest pass!
why doesn't the person asking this dumbass question make a website and then submit it if he's seen everything? certainly we couldn't tell him anything he doesn't already know.
http://www.timemuseum.com/
and at $150 a pop, boy did you spend it!
My favorite part is that they will not let you take your own camera up there, you must buy one of their pre-shot photos if you want something to remember it by.
All in all, a complete scam, and a very large waste of money. Go to bennelong point instead, and imho you will get a much better view of the harbor anyway, free.
Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor - Ovidius
The Neil Stephenson article was really a life-changing experience for me. I work as a professional communicator, and since then have constantly pointed to this piece as a superb example of good technical communication.
In my trips to Arizona I've visited a number of fantastic places:
The Titan Missile Museum (an old missile silo):
http://www.pimaair.org/titan_01.htm
I would love to buy the place and move in, userfriendly.org-style.
It's companion, the Pima Air Museum, has tons of old aircraft including an SR-71 and JFK's Air Force 1. Be sure to hit the hangers:
http://www.pimaair.org/
They're both around Tucson.
The Champlin Fighter Museum has lots of great WWII and WWI stuff:
http://www.champlinfighter.com/ It's east of Phoenix, I think.
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To understand recursion, one must first understand recursion.
Having been born there has nothing to do with my enthusiasm for the place ;-)
beauty is only a light switch away
When I was out at Cape Cod I was driving with my father and we passed a sign that said "Marconi..." and we went back to read the sign. We ended up getting to go to the tower where the first trans-atlantic transmission occured. The place was almost completely destroyed. There were a couple of pieces of concrete, and that was it, except for a couple of plaques and a little model. We need to take more care of our technological history, or we may eventually lose it.
I mean, this one book contains most of the coolest structures in the world - I myself have based many trips around visiting some of the projects mentioned in this book. It's called "The Builders: Marvels of Engineering" Published by The National Geographic Society. There's a link here
Doesn't look like you can buy it on Amazon - my copy doesn't even have an ISBN number - so I think you can only buy it through Nat'l Geographic. Still, at $14.95, I wouldn't complain.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
I went to the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry last year with some engineer friends of mine. We are all recent college grads, and found everything way too ordinary and "dumbed-down" to be interesting or educational. It's not their fault...it's a museum, and there's only so much they can display, only so much detail they can go into. But that's a problem I've had with almost any exhibit I've gone to see...the exhibitors don't have the time, money, or liability insurance to interactively display anything that's really interesting. Thus, the only interesting things I've really found have been participatory engineering organizations, like Formula SAE when I was in college and FIRST after I graduated. There are many of these types of engineering organizations out there to choose from. That's probably getting offtopic though...
Unfortunately, these aren't highly technical places, but they are unique and fascinating.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization(UNESCO) has a list of 730 sites around the world that they qualify as "World Heritage Sites" - sites that are one of a kind culturally significant locations. Things ranging from The Statue of Liberty to Ancient Thebes, and lots of others. I'm sure many of the items listed in this slashdot discussion will also show up on the list. (The Great Wall of China is there too)
I try to visit at least one UNESCO World Heritage site on every trip I take. Many of the sites are fascinating for their architecture as well as their cultural significance.
Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but copyright will always protect me.
Sex - Find It
Join the U.S. armed services and you may soon be able to make a high-tech vacation to Baghdad to see some of their many engineering projects... and bomb them into rubble.
If you're into engineering and the likes you'd probably find the Falkirk Wheel fairly interesting.
Link Me Do
and there's rumours of it being used in the next James Bond movie. Although i'm sure that's just the local's wishful thinking.
One of the best reasources if you're just looking to go somewhere that will impress you in the UNESCO World Heritage Site list. I've been ot a fair number of the places on the list (one of my goals in life is to see them all), an not one has failed to impress me. The awe-inspiring beauty of many of the natural ones, and the engineering feats of many of the historic civilizations.
Another thing always woth checking out is practically anyting by everyone's favourite engineer-who-wants-to-be-an-architect Santiago Calatrava. Personally, I love his bridges, but pretty much everything that he builds is beautiful in appeareance, design, and functionality.
Or just go to Japan, get a JR-Rail Pass, and try to go on every type of Shinkansen in the system. And then spend you last day at an indoor ski hill.
Cue The Sun...
I've got to say that as for 'Engineering Sites', what about some of the more well known ones like, say, the Valley of the kings in Egypt - The reconstructed temples raised from the Aswan (spelling?) Dam - The Ruins of Rome - the Castles of Europe etc...
Space launch sites, high-speed rail lines, container ports, technology museums be damned - go for something with some staying power!
/* affect != effect */ void affect(int *thing,int effect) { *thing += effect; }
http://www.worldsexguide.com/
How about looking at the ways that we get food from mother earth? I grew up in the country side of New Zealand, working on farms until I went to University.
Then, I managed a trip to Taiwan, and discovered that they have some amazing ways of farming, and is the most productive place I've ever seen. There was a fair amount of smarts that went into all of that, and I'm sure you'd find something similar elsewhere.
Joshua
Come check out Boston's Big Dig.
Someone you trust is one of us.
It's a really well-designed exhibit, too--they put a lot of effort into tying the technology of the time to the culture of the time. The science exhibit right next door to it is also worth seeing, as is Julia Child's kitchen, just across the hall. Heck, the whole museum is worth seeing.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
See: Crystal Geyser
Suncoast Linux - Sarasota, FL
You could always visit Singapore. They have a brand new airport which is even bigger and badder than Denver's new airport.
Singapore also is a huge shipping hub. I've heard stories about mile after mile of huge transport ships moored off the coast and connected with floating catwalks. Reminds me of the Raft out of Snowcrash. International shipping is fascinating -- did you know there are still piracy problems, particularly in Malacca Straight off of Singapore? Most of the boats are almost fully automated. [Piracy Article], [piracy stats]
Another good place would be Iceland. They've got some of the highest per capita tech adoption rates in the world. They've also got a vibrant electronic music scene with plenty of commonly known and underground artists.
Finally there is Russia (St. Petersburg or Moscow). Here is another similar Sterling article. I was in Moscow and surrouding cities in 95. It was crazy. You would literally see black Mercedes E class sedans driving the wrong way down the street and everyone rushing to get out of the way (the mob). You would see the 24 hour mini mart in the corner of an old KGB building with an armed guard outside. Some of the old "closed cities" where they did secret military research are now open. Russia is a crazy, chaotic place.
Yes, i know. Things like your mom's crotch.
You should visit the American Computer Museum, where you can "See the Information Highway when it was just a dirt road!".
Located in beautiful Bozeman, Montana!
There are a number of fascinating museums and sites in the UK that chronical the industrial revolution. Start at Ironbridge which is literally where it all started - the first industrial scale ironworks were here. Also take in the National Railway Museum in York which details the rise and development of the railways. The Science Museum in London is a more general review of science and industry, but includes some fascinating exhibits on (mainly British) science of that time. Finally - representing an earlier pivotal period - is the Greenwich Royal Observatory also in London that tells the story of the development of accurate clocks that allowed global navigation and exploration.
The UK is full of historical sites of that era, when Britain lead the world in science and industry. A historically-inclined geek's paradise.
Sailing over the event horizon
USAF Museum in Dayton Ohio.
Arecibo observatory in Puerto Rico.
in baltimore's inner harbour ==>
http://www.charm.net/~bmi/index.html
most everything still runs (giant lathes, printing press, etc), and the tour guides are very knowledgable.
The Friuli Venezia Giulia region has some wonderful food, besides the pasta dishes there is also wild game (like pheasant, hare etc) with Polenta and its also another wine producing region and kinda off the main tourist track so you get to experience a more genuine Italy. It has the mountains (alps) encompassing the region. I found it a really nice experience to try it instead of the usual tourist routes, ended up in Trieste where you can see some great austrian archetecture from when it was occupied by austria. Also the beach in Grado (www.grado.it) was simply amazing.. heh I could go on and on, but I was really glad I had decided to try a different route in touring Italy then the usual places.
I know you're talking about modern engineering projects, but I just got back from a week in Italy, and i'm still amazed.
If you hit any spots in Europe, do yourself a favor and take few days and check out Rome. Not only is the food great, but you can check out ancient engineering that's still standing - the Aquaduct, Colosseum, Pantheon, and, of course, Saint Peter's Basilica at the Vatican. If you hit Rome, stop by Florence and check out the Duomo - a double dome that was built without any scaffolding. And the David is crazy!
Anyway, appreciate the new by seeing how far we've come as engineers.
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
I visited the French Cable Station Museum in Orleans, Cape Cod. It was really very interesting. This is a small museum in the original building where the first French trans-Atlantic submarine communications cable (laid in 1869) connected to the U.S. They have all of the orginal equipment used to send and receive communications, including one of the earliest (I presume) A to D converters which read to and from paper tape.
There weren't many visitors in the museum, and the elderly gentlemen who volunteered there were extremely friendly and more than willing to give an extensive tour of the place and all the equipment. I'd recommend it if you find yourself in that area. As they might say up there, "It's wicked pissah!"
A quick search did not reveal a website for the museum, but there is a bit about it here.
NASA - full scale rockets out front on display
Johnson Space Center
Williams/Transco tower
Barker Resivour (Army Corp of Engineers
water retention dam - on
Highway 6 south of I-10)
Battleship Texas - check out the sweatbox
engine room and main gunnery rooms
Submarine in Seawolf park - Galveston
Causeway bridge - i-45 south to Galveston.
Obversation floor - Second highest in
US - Chase bank building downtown
Astros baseball stadium tour
Texans football stadium tour
Astrodome stadium tour
These are some of the engineering tours.
Let's see here.... there's the world's biggest ball of twine - quite a feat of engineering there. The World of Fish - definitely some engineering to do there... Gator Golf Emporium - well somebody had to build the place in a swamp. The Mystery Vortex? Science (or mysticism), not engineering, but an interesting place to visit nevertheless. Bumpusville - nope, nothing but bad taste there. Ditto for the rest of the places.
It was just mentioned in a recent /. post, but I have to reiterate that the Transrapid/MagLev train is really worth experiencing. Apart from all the controversy about cost, environment etc., it just FEELS great to ride. It is absolutely smooth and at low speeds (such as when coming into a station) absolutely noiseless. You don't know how odd it feels to see such a huge mass moving noiseless. It FEELS very futuristic. You have to experience it first-hand. I took a ride on the test track in Germany ~10 years ago, but I think they are now encouraging visitors more than ever to come. Check www.transrapid.de. In any case, according to the recent /. post, you can just ride the one in Shanghai pretty soon, too, and while you're there take a look at some of Shanghai's futuristic buildings etc.
This comment is printed on 100% recycled electrons.
If you ask me, it's real hard to beat the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum - home to all kinds of aviation and space related stuff. Plus, the location's great - right on the mall in Washington DC.
You can visit the CERN in Geneva. You have to schedule it in advance, but I guess that it will be great (I plan on going there somewhere next year). And Geneva is a beautiful city, so it's great anyway.
You can get a tour of the facility which must prove interesting for every nerd with an interest in elementary particles.
"We live in our minds, and existance is the attempt to bring that life into physical reality" Ayn Rand
There's a really cool science & technology museum in Milan if you're ever there with an afternoon to kill. Florence has a neat museum of renaissance technology including some of the very early telescopes and some old nautical instruments. Italy is packed with cool "technology" of an older sort like bricks, arches, domes, bridges, aquaducts...
If you're ever around DC, the Chesapeake Bay bridge is kinda cool.
If you've got serious bank, take a flight on the Concord while you still can. They are back in service, right? Just seeing one on the runway at JFK made me drool.
Finally, for the travel nut who's been everywhere, there's always Antarctica.
-cbare
Oops... It was actually the second French trans-Atlantic cable that went to Cape Cod, and was laid a few years later. I guess I need to go back to the musem to get re-edumacated...
Just go to the Mexican Caribean. Specially the Mayan Riviera and Cancún. Its just awesome.
The people, the food (yummi!), the girls (i personally dislike so many american girls there but maybe some will like) the scuba diving, swimming with dolphins.
Now on the part of technology they have some awesome finnish build power plants in Cozumel.
Get a tour of a particle accelerator. I saw the big ring and detector at DESY in Hamburg. Oh boy, oh golly. CERN must be even crazier. Especially the detectors and mean big machines. The Tokamak fusion reactor must be similar, too, but I haven't seen this one, I don't know if you can get tours.
This comment is printed on 100% recycled electrons.
I read the wired article on the fiber optic link around the globe just before I went to thailand and malaysia. And I did see a lot of fresh new manholes along the roads of southern thailand. It had to be part of the overland stretches. My girlfriend didn't care about going to any of the landing sites though. :-)
t p://cryptome.org/eyeball.htm
Nowadays I'm much more prepared for tech tourism. First, I've got a Gramin handheld GPS, so I have better chances of reaching just the right location.
Second, there are lots of information available on tech holy sites on the net. Aerial and satelite photos even.
If submarine cable landing sites are your thing, then Cryptome has some interesting pages:
http://cryptome.org/cable-eyeball.htm
ht
If telecom and internet exchange buildings in new york is more your thing, then they've got that as well:
http://cryptome.org/nytel-eyeball.htm
Still, more could be done to encourage tech tourism. More organized tours for accidental tourists, maybe.
ObNorwegian tech tourism site is: the Troll offshore natural gas platform in the north sea. Troll A - the world's tallest concrete platform measures 472 metres from the top of the flare boom to the bottom of the skirts. Total weight is 1050000 tonnes. The Troll A platform is located 65 km from shore in 303m water depth.
Check out Kit Peak Observatory and Arcosanti.
If you are interested, please check out my pictorial travelogue for many of the details of our visit last May where we traveled from Tokyo to Hiroshima and back again.
Phoenix
I've done much of what people have suggested either by vacation or in a class or something like that. I do plan to do more, as I'm still young and healthy and grateful for the opportunities I've had.
... nothing.
But still, nothing compares to sitting on a nice warm beach with a margarita and doing
to email me: take my
Cool! (Sorry, I'm a sucker for Cold War History - might I also recommend The Bureau of Atomic Tourism"> as a vacation planning site?)
For the Bay Area, I recommend the nearby SF-88 Nike Missile Base. During the 60s, this was the last line of defence against incoming bombers - the entire system was dismantled after the signing of the ABM treaty, except for one site that was kept (mostly) intact for historical purposes.
Located just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, and open a couple of days a week, you'll get to stand on the launch platform and descend into the bay where the missiles were stored. When you're not standing on the platform, they can also raise the missiles into firing position.
The tour guides are informed and geeky - when they detect a fellow geek, most will be happy to show off the gear they've restored. Lots of analog computers, vaccuum tubes, and frighteningly-high voltages. Be sure to ask how the computers worked. You'll be amazed at the engineering.
> The tour includes the actual control room where launch codes were recieved, and the infamous red button & code book are kept. You can even push it..Doing so before 1983 would have meant a couple million people would die.. :)
Likewise, the control vans at the Nike Missile Base feature a Button. Pushing said button before 1973, would have taken out a squadron of incoming Soviet bombers 100+ miles away with either a conventionally-tipped or nuclear-tipped warhead, saving several million people :)
Less than two minutes down the road the launcher at SF-88L, is a second Nike launch site - SF-87L. Better known as the Marine Mammal Center, it now defends cute little seals and sea otters, and is also open to visitors daily.
The hike up to the radar platforms at SF-87C is a bit long, but affords a wonderful view of the Marin headlands. (In addition to some of the best views in the Bay Area, the whole area is full of historical artifacts, including abandoned artillery emplacements from the Spanish-American War, through World War I and II.)
If you want to see some spectacular engineering, I suggest visiting the Delta Works in the Netherlands.
The Delta Works are basically a series of projects, culminating in the flood control barrier in the Eastern Scheldt (Oosterscheldedam), to protect the lower areas of the Netherlands against flooding.
The impetus to build them was the great storm of 1953, where a combination of storm and high tides flooded most of the coastal regions, claiming some 1800 lives. A decision was made to improve our already impressive flood defences.
One problem turned up however: the Eastern Scheldt. This arm of the Scheldt delta was unique in terms of its environmental value, and also home to a very lucrative arm of the fishing industry (mussels and oysters). In order to protect both the environment and business, a decision was made to put in a flood barrier instead of a regular dam.
At its time, the Eastern Scheldt flood barrier was the most technologically advanced piece of hydrological engineering in the world, and you'll still be hard pressed to find its equal now.
The official URL returns an error from where I'm sitting, but a Google search on "Delta Works" returns enough English-language sites to give you an idea.
Bonus: most Dutchmen have a fair command of the English language, so getting around should be easy. I am also a native of the area that was hit hardest, so if you need a personal guide, just drop me an e-mail.
Mart"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
For big engineering, there is Mauna Kea. Several of the world's largest telescopes, sprouting like mushrooms from the top of an extinct volcano. Cough up a hundred and fifty bucks or so and you get a guided tour of the summit, as well as a ride up from the coast. And parkas--even in August it's bloody cold up there. The sunset from the top is to die for, and you're almost always above the clouds. It's like the surface of the moon--no vegetation, just dust. The guided tours also usually stop on the way down at around 10,000' and set up a smaller scope for some observing and general stargazing. Very cool.
This is science, not engineering, but you really should go snorkelling, or SCUBA diving if you have your papers. There's a lot of interesting life just about anywhere you get into the water.
More biology: the smallest, least settled island at the end of the chain (Kaui) is mostly rain forest. See the Grand Canyon of the Pacific, and hike through the forests. The Bali Ha'i scenes from the movie version of South Pacific were shot here. Very much worth the trip, since Aloha Airlines runs very inexpensive flights between the islands. (Don't forget to take pictures of Hickam AFB when you're flying into or out of Honolulu.)
~Idarubicin
See what may be the oldest, tangible example of failure in successful engineering: the Vasa museum in Sweden.
Visiting the Vasa remains one of my favorite things to do in one of the greatest cities in the world. And you'd better check it out soon, it's found to be deteriorating quickly.
Speaking of deterioration, now is the time to visit Venice. Venice is sinking and is not to be missed! It truly is a marvel of ingenuity and beauty.
National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Greenbank, WV. I make a pilgrimage every year or so. I generally just do the self guided tour (ab't 2 miles).
And while in London, most definately check out the Science museum. I spent a full weekend in there and still missed a bunch of stuff. Very, very cool. They had to drag me out...
Of course if in Washington DC you must check out the Smithsonian.
I think you'll find the capitals of most industrialized countries have some form of science & technology museum where they showcase the home grown discoveries and engineering feats, so you're never too far from a good find.
If you can afford the trip to Europe, I would recommend you visited the CERN particle ring. The largest facility is a 9 kilometer diameter ring located across the Swiss/French border. They use it to collide particles and create anti-matter. You'll get to see one of the finest display of technology to be found out there.
On a side note, there's a NeXT workstation in the entrance hall which was allegedly involved in creating the WWW.
- Matthieu
Anyone else remember that story?
Keep passing the open windows...
> Is there anyone besides me who likes to travel
3 19%40fnald.fnal.gov&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain
> and look at engineering projects?
Frederik Pohl, the great science fiction writer,
for one. He recently published a book called
*Chasing Science* which is a guide for people like
you (and me).
Fred describes himself as a "science fan" and
he's fascinated with science and technology
as spectator sports. He's visited labs, digs,
observatories, volcanoes, museums, and historic
sites. He also attends technical conferences.
Good homework for a hard-SF writer, to be sure,
but to Fred it's pure fun.
In the book Fred describes some possible
destinations, tells a lot of his science-tourist
stories, and provides lists of places to visit.
It would be a great gift for a kid who's gobbled
up books about his favorite science topics and
wants to find ways to learn more.
By the way, I really liked the Stephenson article,
too, but "hacker tourism" is scarcely new. Here's
something I wrote when it was first published:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=1996Dec3.133
Summary: Charles Babbage did it, too.
Bill Higgins
Fermilab
Having lived there for a while, my main regret is that the only time I go is when visitors come out and we take them there. Amazing place - engineering, science, often a very nifty special exhibition, and completely hands on. Great geek place.
Also in San Fran, although suspension bridges get kinda old, is the Golden Gate. Lots of fun to walk out and feel it sway underneath you as it literally just hangs there. Plus there's a piece of the cable down by the visitor's center - huge! - amazing. Plus great photo-op of the Bay and the Marin Headlands.
Somebody already pointed out the Stanford Linear Accelerator that runs underneath 280, south of SF.
----------
(define (.sig) (cons 'my (list 'other 'car 'is 'a 'cdr)))
http://4horsemen.net
Fallingwater-Frank Lloyd Wright's cantilevered masterpiece; a house built ON TOP OF a waterfall in western Pennsylvania
Cahokia Mounds-If you can't go to Macchu Picchu, you should visit this World Heritage Site, conveniently close to:
Gateway Arch, St. Louis
Pont du Gard-giant aqueduct bridge over a river in Provence, France
I-70 in Glenwood Canyon, CO
The land reclaimation projects in Holland are engineering masterpieces.
I lived about 15m below sea level and used to look up at ships travelling
down the nearest canal. You've got to see the Zuiderzee
and the Rhine delta projects.
The Oresund bridge between Denmark and Sweden is amazing,
completed a couple of years ago it's 16km (~ 9 miles) long.
Back in 1999 I took the train from Amsterdam to Beijing. I went thru Berlin,
Minsk, St. Petersburg, Moscow, along the trans-Sib to Irkutsk
then south to Mongolia and into China. It took three weeks in all with a
couple of days stops along the way. The Russian train stays on Moscow
time the whole way thru. I had train lag getting off! It's the Trans
Mongolian rather than the Trans Siberian and it's more interesting
since you get to go thru Mongolia and end up in China.
In China I went to the Great Wall of China, altho' it is impressive I wasn't
blown away by it. I think I'd heard too much about it already. I only
saw one section, if you followed it for thousands of kilometers then you'd
respect the builders a hell of a lot more....
The Cathederal in Cologne is pretty impressive.
The attention to detail is second to none, even in places no one would
normally look.
and a plug for home, the 5000 year old Megalithic Passage Tomb at
Newgrange in Ireland is awe inspiring. On the morning of
the shortest day of the year, a shaft of light shines thru an opening
over the entrance and fills the chamber inside. It's humbling to
think that people were making those sort of claculations so long ago...
http://academic.emporia.edu/aberjame/ice/lec14/wie licz.htm
Pretty phenomenal blending of art and science. Over several hundred years, Polish miners decorated the tunnels of this salt mine, carving numerous sculptures out of solid salt. The real treasure though is an entire cathedral, hewn out of solid salt and rock, located deep underground.
The picture in the link doesn't do it justice.
I went up the Yangtze a couple of years ago, ending up at the incredible disaster-in-the-making, the Three Gorges Dam, in central China. There is little to compare it with but the Great Wall, it's that monumental an engineering project.
It's also that monumental a human-rights disaster. I don't know how many workers are buried in the dam (as they are said to be in the Great Wall) but many millions of people have been uprooted from their ancestral lands in service of this ill-conceived development project. (Wait till the dam breakes in an earthquake and drowns three million. And if not that, wait till this 400-mile stagnant lake that replaces the Yangtze fills with industrial waste and sewage.)
Still, it's like a car wreck. You can't help but be fascinated.
It is cool place to go! The Museum of the Moving Image was great, and hopefully it will be even better when it re-opens.
Then go and experience London Transport itself, and wonder to yourself "Did this bunch really run a friggin empire? How the fuck did they make this mess?"
If you're from anywhere seriously hot, then you might want to try traveling on the London Underground at peak times in summer. You know... for the masochist in you.
If you plan on going anywhere by late at night, you might wanna try to get hold of some sorta firearm or at least a decent blade. If you're gonna rely on the train service to get you home at night, best pack a tent and some supplies in case the trains are up shit creek and you get stranded. rail.kizoom.co.uk is a WAP address that could save your bacon, its the mobile version of the suprisingly useful Railtrack Travel Timetable.
Of course, if you're rich enough you can get a traditional London black cab, but watch that fare!
Unrelated to technology, but still cool is The British Museum. It's in great financial difficulty at the moment, but full of treasures. It might make a nice change.
Happy travels...
Ali
Ph33r m3!!!
Check out http://www.atomictourist.com
Someone suggested SLAC. I'd add to that Fermilab, in Batavia, Illinois, not too far from Chicago. They have a circular ring (4mi circumference, I think), and a buffalo herd to keep the grass short..
big earth movers are really cool. there are a number of them that have been turned into museums.
Warning: If you visit Centralia, it's probably best to do so with a buddy. The ground can sink, and the gases leaking from the ground (CO, SO2, and others) are none too healthy. If you visit and you start to feel lightheaded or nauseous, move upwind or downwind until the feeling goes away.
Interesting fact for the day: Centralia is a drop in the proverbial bucket. There's a coal fire in China that releases 360 million tons of CO2 per year, an amount "equivalent to that emitted per year from all automobiles and light trucks in the United States".
(Rant: With that in mind, can someone explain to me why those Canadians think the Kyoto Protocol, which won't apply to China, is worth ratifying, and environmentalists in America think SUVs are the real cause of global warming?)
Um, first trans-atlantic transmission would have been made at Signal Hill near St. John's Newfoundland. Marconi was the guy, but Cape Code wasn't the place.
See here for more:
http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~jcraig/marconi.html
If you call them, you can get a private hard-core hard-hat tour guided by on staff engineers through parts of the dam not on the tourist tour. Freaking amazing!!!!
Try the Museum of Science and Industry. It's famous for a replica of a coal mine, a new model railroad exhibit and lots of other great tech stuff. The best exhibit of all is the U-505. A captured German submarine from WWII.
Some slashbots will moan and groan about the NSA...
But I've been to their museum, and it is incredibly
interesting. Don't be dissuaded by the outside either!
http://www.nsa.gov/museum/index.html
One person already mentioned the Boeing factory. I went through the BMW factory in Greenville/Spartanburg South Carolina a few years ago and it was pretty amazing. In both cases you have to plan. At Boeing, you need to show up at the start of the day to get one of the limited spaces. BMW needs reservations a week or so ahead of time. They have a really interesting museum there, kind of a subset of the one in Munich.
VW just completed a new factory (in Germany somewhere -- doh!) where they're building the Phaeton luxury car. The factory is in a glass building and it's *designed* to be toured.
Wineries are fun, too. And you can always try a sample at the end (something Boeing, BMW, and VW have yet to try).
Then take the Chunnel over to Calais, France and drive south to the V2 launch site from where they managed to take out most of Croydon, South London. Which is probably worth doing again, it being 50 years or so since the last bombardment.
The launch site is interesting as it was actually the final stages of the assembly line: unpack, fueling, QA, arming, fire at London, repeat. Shows how the response times of warfare have changed.
The french make a big thing of the site, "The birthplace of space exploration" or something, but I think the place in Germany where the rockets came from has that distinction. This is more the birthplace of supersonic delivery of explosives onto foreign cities.
Urban Exploration, sometimes known on college campuses as vadding, is the activity of exploring major manmade engineering works, urban and industrial ruins, and other large-scale structures that are accessible. Sometimes this is done without permission per se and other times it's done in blatent violation of trespassing signs, but it should always be done without vandalism or theft.
Two great starting points are the Infiltration webring and Panic!'s Urban Adventure site.
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.
This type of project seems like it would be an ideal canidate for a "Slashdot-esque" website utilizing either the original Slashcode or a port of it (I've been playing with PHP Slash and have been very impressed.)
Its relatively easy to set up (less than an hour if you know what you're doing) and wouldn't require nearly as much maintenence as Slashdot as you would have quite a few less submissions.
I've written up travelogs about some of the geeky places I've visited. Some that I would recommend include: Porthcurno's Museum of Submarine Telegraphy (mentioned in that Stephenson article), the lava works of Kagoshima, the London Museum of Science, and the Telephone Pioneer Museum of Albuquerque.
There is the huge airship hangar and stuff down in San Jose, on the same site as NASA Ames, that should also be worth a visit. Think you have to be a US citizen to get in though.
See http://thorntree.lonelyplanet.com/thorn/branches.p l . It's the most active travel message board I've found so far.
The UK was also the site of the first reactor fire, Windscale, back in1957...Sellafield as it is now know is a popular and free tourist resort near the lake district.
To round it off you could do 3Mile Island and then Chernobyl, though I'd still be pretty reluctant to do the latter.
As most of us are real Internet junkies, let's go where modern intercontinental telecommunications began:
Le Radom is the European side of the first intercontinental satellite link between Europe and the US. It is an absolutely fascinating building like a huge white ball (they told us there you could fit the Paris Arc de Triumph (sp?) in there) containing the not less impressing antenna itself, nicely illuminated and sitting beside France Telecoms Museum for Telecommuncations.
Conventiently it is also placed in the absolutely scenic northern Brittany near the city of Lannion, which is always worth a trip.
The Powerhouse Museum in Sydney Australia - has what is believed to be the oldest existing machine of the industrial revolution - Boultan and Watt Rotatative Steam Engine from 1785. It's 1 of 3 originally, the other 2 have since been destroyed, but this one is in working condition and they start it up once a day.
Shipped from England in the late 1800's it's an interesting piece of history if you are in that part of the world.
Also, directly in the shadow of a huge airship hangar at Moffett Field, is the Computer History Museum.
Very geek-friendly, geared towards a technical audience, and not at all dumbed-down like the "kid-friendly" computer sections in "normal" museums.
The site says open Wednesday/Friday at 1300h, and the First and Third Saturdays of each month at 1300 and 1400h. Admittance to Moffet Field requires that you show driver's licence or other photo ID, but I don't think you have to be a US citizen.
Upcoming lectures include Steve Wozniak on December 10th. (woot!)
National Rail Museum York England,a wonderful place to spend a day http://www.nrm.org.uk/. If you can pull yourself away from the museum the cathedral in the city is also amazing.
These places have some of the tallest buildings in the world. I am not sure how close you can get to the Three Gorges Dam west of Shanghai, which is one of the largest construction projects in the world. other interesting things in those countries too.
Always check out the local brewery. They usually have free (or cheap) samples, plus other cool memorabilia.
'seems like we should be making information about cool places like this available via TerraVision. --kyler
You asked for relevant websites, so here's my Geek Travel Guide.
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
http://www.glasswings.com/
All I can say is the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia. From the site:
"The Museum's collections include over 20,000 objects, including approximately 900 fluid-preserved anatomical and pathological specimens; 10,000+ medical instruments and apparati, primarily dating between 1750 and the present; ca. 400 anatomical and pathological models in plaster, wax, papier mache, and plastic; ca. 200 items of memorabilia of famous scientists and physicians; and ca. 1500 medical illustrations in the form of lantern slides, 35 mm. slides, photographs, drawings, and prints. The Museum continues to receive medical instruments and specimens donated by Fellows, other physicians, and individuals."
In other words, this place has all sorts of interesting medical oddities, including the lady who turned to soap, siamese twin skeletons, preserved children born with horns, etc. Don't mod me down for bad taste, the museum exists to further medical and rational knowledge of the strange and misunderstood.
There's Ironbridge Gorge if you like historical engineering stuff - it's name comes from the cast iron beridge that was built across the gorge in 1779. It was where modern iron-working was developed.
In London, there's the Thames barrier - a major part of London's flood defences, the Science Museum, the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the spot that longitude is measured from and where the worlds timezones are based on (any pedants who want to reply to this pointing outthat an average of a collection of atomic clocks throughout the world is now used will get slapped and told to bugger off and stop being such an annoying pedantic twat...) There's also London Open House, which is more of an architecture thing really, and is mostly only for one weekend a year, but they do have events all year round.
I really liked http://www.aas-jakobsen.no/Bridges/References/Nord hordland_Bridge/Floating_Bridge/nordhordland_float ing_bridge_e.htm when I visited Bergen.
Beginning this year and finishing in 2008 the Washington State Department of transportation will be building a second suspension bridge across the Tacoma Narrows. About 30 miles south of Seattle. This bridge will be adjacent to the more famous bridge that collapsed in a windstorm 1940's and was rebuilt.
It will be the first suspension bridge of any reasonable size (over 5000ft) built in the United States since I believe the early 1960s. In recent years the only country (that I know of) building large numbers of suspension bridges has been Japan.
Wash. State DOT Project Page
The Champlin Fighter Museum is in Mesa, which is in the eastern part of the Phoenix metro area. Another great aircraft museum is the USAF Museum in Dayton, OH at Wright-Patterson AFB. They have the only surviving XB-70 Valkyrie, an X-15, Apollo 15's command module and a whole wing just for Presidential aircraft that I didn't get a chance to visit.
There are better places to go in Chicagoland if you're interested in technology history. Like the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, where the first web browser (Mosaic) was developed. Or the University of Chicago, the site of the Manhattan Project, where the first atomic pile was developed and the first artificial nuclear chain reaction occurred. Or the Fermi national accelerator laboratory. Or the Argonne national laboratory. Or the Northwestern University Institute for Nanotechnology. Or the Northwestern University's International Center for Advanced Internet Research. The first sandwich transistor was also designed here, while William Shockley was in town for New Year's Eve, 1947/8.
Also, the MoSaI is a damn sight more than $9, especially now that they encourage you to buy "city passes", which are a combined ticket for the MoSaI, the Field museum, the Shedd aquarium, the Adler planetarium, the Art Institute, the Historical Society, and probably a whole fucking slew of other things.
One of the most amazing engineering feats of the 20th century is the panama canal, which I recently experienced... as I just transited my sailboat through the canal system from pacific side to atlantic side. You can see the pictures here
-- Greg
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
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.
Also if you're visiting Australia and are interested in engineering feats/projects, you can't go past the Snowy Mountains/River Hydro-electric scheme - a massive undertaking during its time (and probably, comparably still pretty big):
Snowy Hydro SchemeUp in northern Minnesota there is research going on in the Soudan mines. The technological and engineering feats accomplished to get where they currently are are astounding!
Here's a link to more info on it:
www.physics.umn.edu/outreach/soudantour/
Find something/person you're interested in and do some research on them. Then maybe visit their old stomping grounds. There's a lot of interesting things in the world.
If anyone else has interest in World War 2 and cryptography, take a trip to London and take the train an hour out to Bletchley Park for the day. It was well worth it for me. VERY cool stuff. `8r) (Oh, and don't point out you're american to the tour guide, or all he'll talk about how great those american chaps are. heh)
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
If you want to really travel try the Tsing Ma Bridge in Hong Kong.
I watched this bridge being built
http://www.cityu.edu.hk/CIVCAL/book/bridge.html
It spans the ma wan channel between lantau and kowloon, and is unusual as there is a train line inside the road deck.
I lived in Colorado Springs for a few years and got to take the NORAD tour late in 1993. They stopped doing the tours at some point, and still don't as far as I know. If it ever becomes available again, it would be worthy of a visit.
The entire complex is deep inside Cheyenne Mountain in a cavern they dug out of the rock. There are multiple buildings, each mounted on a huge springs to deal with vibrations from nukes or other similar events. The buildings have flexible connectors like miniature bridges to deal with the variable distances.
There are huge caverns filled with fuel for powering their generators. As they explained on the tour, they disconnect from the local grid any time a storm comes within a certain distance.
At one point you get to see the control room through a glass wall from the adjacent conference room. They had a map showing the Space Shuttle on the displays while we visited. It's nowhere near as large as the main room in WarGames. That was pure Hollywood.
I used to work at an old bookstore in Boston and sometimes had to take packages over to the post office between Boston Common and Chinatown.
One day I noticed a small plaque that mentioned that the telephone had been invented there. Made me sort of sad that all they did was put up a stupid plaque.
Cheers,
Jim
-- My Weblog.
The Deutsches Museum in Munchin, Germany was hands down the best museum I've ever been in. They have the perfect assortment of hands on exhibits and traditional exhibts. They range from computers (peices of ENIAC), to sound (rooms explaining sound and a gallery full of musical instruments) to trains, ships, and mining. When I was in the ship gallery they had a full size canal tug (I think, yes I'm a Naval Architect but everything gets fuzzy after awhile.) It had an opening to see the inside structure and engine. While I was looking at it an employee came and started the engine! This was in the middle of a museum. I could have spent the rest of the year in there but unfourtunatly I only had a day.
http://www.deutsches-museum.de/e_index.htm
here
Florida to see a space shuttle launch...
Arizona to see Kitt Peak Observatory...
I've never tried to hit a non-touristy site, like a cable being layed... just my luck, I'd show up for the three days where they were cracking rocks.
This will never get mod'd high enough for anyone to see it... but, I lived abroad for a couple of years and toured all over Europe and S. Africa. Motorcycling the Pyrenees, drinking beer with elephants, and exploring the castles of Prague never could compare with the wonder of the Parisian sewers. Les Musee d' le Egouts, about a block from the Eiffel Tower takes you through a live working sewer. They had a ton of cool info on how during the 19th century London and other cities had the same thing.
It was without a doubt the coolest thing I've seen thus far. And my female companion didn't even get disgusted. Mostly grey water from sinks and whatnot anyway.
Porthcurno has already been mentioned in passing, but deserves a post of its own. The C&W Museum of Submariine Telegraphy in Porthcurno, Cornwall is way cool. This is the spot where many of the international cables (but not the ones to the US) landed, and the facilities were move in WWII into tunnels blasted into the cliff. The museum is mainly in the tunnels, and is really neat.
A bonus is that the cove and beach where the cables came in is really lovely, and there's a neat open-air theatre there (unfortunately, there were no performances when I visited. The whole area is beautiful, but the facility at Lands End is so commercialized that it's sure to disappoint.
Two other geek holy places in the general area are the site of Marconi's first transatlantic transmitting station at Poldhu, and the Goonhilly Downs (hope I didn't screw up that name) satellite receiving site that BT runs. The tour at Goonhilly is pretty lame if you're technically inclined, but the field full of big dishes is a neat site. Poldhu has no tourist facility at all, just a stunning bluff, a monmument to Marconi, and a memorial ham radio club station (unfortunately unoccupied when I was there).
Poldhu and Goonhilly are only a couple of miles apart, so you get an interesting sense of the old and the new in radio technology.
For space stuff, there are big museums ... and then there's the Kansas Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, Kansas. SR-71 in the lobby, only location that has both V1 & v2 rockets, huge range of space hardware and prototypes including Soviet space balls. http://www.cosmo.org/
For old stuff, there's the Eiffel tower ... or the tallest building in the world before that: the Koelner Dom. http://www.koeln.de/
For natural stuff it's hard to beat the Grand Canyon.main() {1;}
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
HORRAY ! You've one the award of the most uninteresting question in this Ask Slashdot Column.
I dont believe you'd cross the world to see some cables or some rails.
1) Big Brutus, in West Mineral, Kansas - the second largest electric shovel in the world, and (IIRC) the only one still in (more or less) one piece. If you are in Branson, MO you are a couple of hours out.
2) The Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center, Hutchinson, Kansas. See where Apollo 13 and Liberty Bell were restored, and (in a couple of months) watch them restore a V2 rocket (and even help them do it!). (While here, if it isn't Sunday, get directions to The Carrage Crossing restaurant).
3) EBR-1 the world's first breeder reactor, and the first reactor to make electric power, just outside Arco, Idaho (first city to be powered by nuclear power) (while here, you can go through Craters of the Moon National Park, one of the places that the Apollo astronauts trained. Stay in the DK inn, and you have a good chance of staying in one of the rooms they stayed in).
4) The Very Large Array, outside Socorro, New Mexico. While here, you could also go through White Sands National Park.
5) The London Bridge V2.1 in Lake Havasu, Nevada, where the entire London Bridge was relocated to.
6) The Jefferson National Expansion Memorial a.k.a. The Saint Lewis Arch - there is quite a museum below the arch, and I found it mind-blowing to realize that Saint Lewis is an ocean port.
7) Mount Rushmore National Park - go through the Rushmore Borglum Story for how they carved it and the tricks Borglum used to make the faces look more alive. While there, stop by....
8) Crazy Horse Memorial to see such a work being created.
9) Mesa Verde National Park, near Cortez, Colorado, and Walnut Canyon National Monument, near Flagstaff, AZ, are great examples of how people can eake out a living and build a city where you wouldn't think anybody could survive.
Of course, just look at The National Parks Service website for all sorts of cool places to go.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Cult of a missile in a silo?
Beneath the Planet of the Apes.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
In Munich, Germany
:)
This museum is HUUUUUUGE!
It has all sorts of industrial and technological
artifacts and exhibits, from a viking warship to a long hall of exhibits that mix two chemicals to demonstrate the reaction.
I've heard it would take you a year to see the whole museum if you spent a minute at each exhibit. But I had fun just visiting it for one day
Just to go Vegas and see the world all in one convenient location - The Eiffel tower, NYC, pyramids of Egypt, Venice, Monte Carlo, Medieval Europe, ancient Rome, the list goes on. All 100% realistic. And no need to ever leave the good old US of A.
There are lots of great European geek sights, but labels are almost all in local languages. Some good ones:
Making trouble today for a better tomorrow...
I second that. Just a week ago I had the pleasure of looking out the window of a 737 while the Concorde took off, making an awe inspiring trail of flame, heat, and smoke. Probably generated about 5 times the pollution of the 747, but it was damn cool looking. A unique sight.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Look at http://www.urbanadventure.org/
Truly a hacker-feat of engineering, according to this guy..
http://www.tinaja.com/glib/gramtram.pdf
TIM
NSA cryptologic museum outside Fort Meade, its FREE! cool brochures FREE!
How about a Giant Laser World Tour? Start with the petawatt "Nova" laser at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.
http://www.llnl.gov/str/News896.html
Tokyo.
Seriously, though, I was recently talking to my boss (another engineering geek!) about where to take my vacation time, and he told me about the time he went to Fermi... Apparently, if you ask the right questions (ahead of time), you can get on the tour with one of the doctoral grad students who will show you all around the miles of underground tunnels, and show you the entire particle accelerator!
-T
One way to select vacation destinations is to become an eclipse chaser. I've seen three total solar eclipses so far. Over the last several years, there have been eclipses over the Taj Mahal, the Galapagos, Hawaii, Africa, Australia, and Madagascar, for instance. The coolest one I saw was in the middle of a rainforest in Guatemala surrounded by scared sh1tless birds, monkeys, and Mayans. I hear one's going to be over Scotland next year (I think). Sounds good to me.
I'm sure there are tons of other old engineering structures of interest to mention. Here is one I recently observed: Il Duomo Cathedral in Florence. It is the largest concrete dome in the world. It was built as a self supporting structure; it is actually two domes in one. One can walk inbetween the two shells up to the top and then go outside onto the top of the dome. The church is huge too, but the dome (designed by Brunaleschi) really impressed me.
How about you visit Africa and see an African Elephant? Or maybe visit India and see a Bengal Tiger? Or maybe visit Peru and see an Andean Condor? Or maybe visit Australia and see a Grey Nurse Shark? You know... while some still exist?
Sheesh.
-----
PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
I was also going to suggest Hoover Dam. You can stay there all day, and I understand that there is a little-publicized but pricey "behind the scenes" tour that I'm sure is to die for. The experience would be especially useful if you could actually get one of the guides aff to yourself for a while - they'll bend your ear about everything and anything Dam. While looking at it, ponder that if not for it - and you'd never be able to get something like it built in this day and age; forget it - we might well be speaking Japanese or German now.
Although Hoover Dam (initially, Boulder Dam, IIRC) was primarily built for flood control, the electric power generation made it possible for a giant aircraft industry to grow and flourish in California. Now, if only our current administration weren't so fossil-fuel-besotted...
Reminds of Beyond 2000 the TV show that whats on the Discovery channel.
Aw the days!
If you don't like the topic, go post to one you fancy. A lot of geeks have to do lots of business travel, and some nice geeky destinations round the world are a very cheerful, interesting thought.
Making trouble today for a better tomorrow...
However, I would like to visit the sites of some engineering failures.
If you're interested in famous engineering failures of Eastern Canada, check out the Quebec Bridge story.
Also read To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design (if you haven't already).
Every year they honor some pioneers in computing and electronics (Steve Wozniak has attended on two separate occasions).
It's really worth a look if you happen to be in the area.
I've lived in Tokyo for over a year now. I've taken the shinkansen (bullet trains) and see them pass through Tokyo station everyday. Neither of these allows you to actually SEE a bullet train up close at full speed. The first time I did (a few weeks ago) it was an amazingly moving experience.
The key is to be at a station in the MIDDLE of the line. Taking the train from Tokyo to Osaka (of some other big city) you will never see the trains at full speed. We took the Nasuno to Nasu Shiobara. This is a major shinkansen stop, but not the end of the line. While standing on the platform, trains will pass by on the center tracks at full speed!
We were waiting for the next train to Tokyo, and had luckily gone up to the platform about 20 minutes early. We saw two shinkansen pass us at full speed, going in opposite directions one after another. It was truly amazing...When you look down the track, its absolutely amazing how far away they are only seconds later. It was a very powerful experience I will never forget.
If you travel outside the cities in Japan, I highly recommend taking advantage of this. And, while you can see the trains in the middle of the country passing this way, I doubt you can get as close as you can when on the platform. Much of the tracks are raised high above the ground for long stretches. This station was in the middle of nowhere, but the platform is raised at least 4-5 stories off the ground...(as is the track for as far as I could see in either direction...)
I was down at Atlantis on Paradise Island last year. It is one huge resort, they give tours o the entire backend. I wanted to go on a tour but didn't make the time while I was there.
Get a great vacation (go to the italian restuarant to celebrat someones birthday), and check out what goes into driving a huge resort.
The Stephenson "Hacker Tourist" would be interested in the heaviest examples of all of society's infrastructures. All your examples were about transportation infrastructures, and Stephenson did telecom.
...maybe these aren't as sexy technologies as telecom and transportation, but they're older, more basic, more necessary.
There's still:
Power (Oil wells, Coal Mines, power plants, NUCLEAR power plants, major switch stations)
Water & Wastewater (Plants)
Food (Farms, Orchards, Ranches, various factories)
It's not exactly what you had in mind, but the work of Spanish architect/engineer Santiago Calatrava is an amazing bunch of engineering+art. The fact that a lot of his stuff is in Spain (bridges) and Switzerland (train stations) doesn't hurt. Oh, and there's the art museum in Milwaukee (USA)
For those interested in the macarbe side of medicine try the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia.
I went there during my visit to the states and it is quite interesting with exhibits from the College of Surgeons at the turn of the 19th Century.
Some highlights include a collection of skulls used for phrenology (sp?) and one doctors collection of things people swallowed (including live ammunition!).
"I propose we leave math to the machines and go play outside" -- Calvin
Have you considered the spectacle of really big crowds? Having a million people swarming all around you is a tremendous experience. (and for those who think it doesn't count as a technical marvel.. try arranging the toilet facilities for a million people)
1. India's Kumbh Mela festival. Only happens every twelve years; you'll have to wait around ten (?) for the next. The last one was said to be the largest gathering of humanity in one place ever (i.e. 45 million people packed into a few km^2 to bathe in the river)
2. The Love Parade in Berlin. Usually happens in early July. 1-1.5 million people, packed shoulder to shoulder as far as the eye can see. Good music, too.
Other cool places:
1. The Boeing Everett Factory (somebody else already linked to it above) is a staggeringly large building. It has its own internal weather patterns.
2. The Deutsche Museum in Munich.
3. The Boneyard. Imagine row after row after row of decomissioned aircraft-- military and civilian-- stretching off to desert horizon in every direction. It's a part of Davis Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona; they have tours, and you can even find satellite pictures of it on the Terraserver if you're clever. I've never been, but some of my colleagues (aerospace engineers) swear by it.
4. Burning Man. Artificial city, grand utopian experiment. Of course, it only lasts for a week or so every year.
Here's one with stuff about construction in Thailand-- Subway, Skytrain, airports, buildings, bridges, etc: 2bangkok.com
They have a great museum of old manufactoring and household items.
It was a former soda water(fizzy lemonade)and they still can demonstrate how they manually had to fill the glass bottles. however it has since been filled with other machiary and items from the early age of industry.
Also the town of York England has a great household/life museum containing manufactoring and industrial items including an old water driven mill. One neat thing thier is they have a set of rooms setup as kitchens from each decade from 1920 to 1980 showing what was common during each of thoses decades and how kitchens have changed.
Then you cannot forget the grand daddy of the all, IronBridge the start of the industrial revolution. You can walk accross the bridge and then they have a museum of the original forge and a modern museum about that time period and also modern iron working.
If Civil Engineering is your thing, go to Switzerland and watch the Grand Dixence Dam in the Alps in Valais. This is the highest (as in altitude) dam in the world. The view is also pretty damn neat.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
What's in Dayton, Ohio? The US Air Force Museum, which has an absolutely amazing collection of aircraft. Some of the more exotic ones include: an F-117 stealth fighter, an F-22, an xb-70 (the mach 3 bomber, which in my opinion was more of a technical achievement than the SR-71), and a YF-12 (the little known interceptor version of the SR-71...just imagine the look on the soviet pilot's face when he sees a plane travelling mach 3.5+ launch a missle at him). The website is also very well done: http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/
IF you're pretty close to Vancouver, it's well worth it to check out TRIUMF, Canada's largest cyclotron. It's a very impressive facility, well worth the drive.
"Entropy is the bad-guy, and he is everywhere"
I'm exactly that kind of geek :)
On a few trips to the US I've visited a few SR71, when having a single day off.
I've used the Aviation Museum Locator:
http://www.aero-web.org/museums/museums.htm /deepo
http://destined.to/dani "Dani in Japan" website about a foriegn exchange student in Japan. Mildly interesting.
My wife and I spent last year travelling around the world. (Yeah, dot-com refugees, how boring). Many highlights (safari in Tanzania, Kerala backwaters), but a few geek-related sites spring to mind:
Hoover Dam
National Aviation Museum (Ottawa, Canada)
CN Tower (Toronto)
Royal Observatory at Greenwich
(Special display of Harrison's chronometers)
Stonehenge (cooler than I expected)
Roman Baths at Bath (ditto)
Imperial War Museum Duxford (aviation)
Victoria and Albert Museum
Forth Rail Bridge (Edinburgh)
the alpine gondola system around Interlaken
The Pyramids
Medinat Habu (Valley of the Kings, Luxor)
Eiffel Tower
Hagia Sofia (Istanbul)
Dubai Airport
Mantar Jantar (Delhi)
Sky Trains in Bangkok
and the biggie:
Angkor Wat (near Siem Reap, Cambodia)
two geek things I didn't get to do this trip were: visiting the Jager LeCoultre watch manufacture in Switzerland, and seeing the giant hydroelectric station inside a hollowed-out mountain somewhere in Scotland.
And not to forget the Lehrter Stadtbahnhof, a new huge railway station. It includes a couple of tracks in a tunnel, crossed by several others on a dam, and the whole thing is covered with one of Europe's largest glass roofs. Really impressive.
Most of the sites have some kind of viewing platform. The Potsdamer Platz and the government sites used to have visitor centers proper, with models, guides, video, coffeeshops and souvenirs to boot! If you expend some effort to establish local contacts to one of the engineering firms, you may get more access than a regular visitor. Maybe www.berlin.de has more information on the engineering projects.
-- H. Wilker
But yes, it is much bigger in person than in the pictures. Its just vast.
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
you should try the devil's nose train journey. It's a line in Ecuador that doesn't really go anywhere. it starts off from riobamba and then works it's way thru some amazing country before decending a ridiculously steep mountain. All this and you do it sitting on the roof of the train. terrifying if you have a fear of hights like me ;-)
Ecuador is small and easy to get round. For the geeks there's active volcanoes (there's one going off right now near the capital Quito), rainforest and of course the equator. And Finally of course there's the Galapagoes islands where the idea that has rocked fundamentalist religons (Darwinism) was born.
I'm surpirsed nobody mentioned CERN yet, a huge kick-ass particle accelerator among many things and the birthplace of the WWW by the way.
A must-see for any self-respected geek!
Idempotent operation: Like MS software, wether you run it once or often, that doesn't make it any better.
Try looking at old buildings and imagine the engineering needed at the time of construction to build it. Try carrowmore or Newgrange for really old engineering ;)
I'm from Europe + when I was hitchhiking through the US I did the usual touresty stuff around the White House etc.
I hardly heard a single American accent in DC!
People will trael the world but not look at what is on there own doorstep. (I'm sure I could say the same for most cities in the world)
Incidently, the Musiums in DC are some of the best I've ever visited....
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
As a bonus, you are about 10km from the spectacular waterfalls at Foz do Iguaçu, and if you take the dam tour, you get to cross into Paraguay (although they don't let you off the bus).
Seeking Interesting Sites When Travelling the World
My home city, (Kingston upon Hull,East Yorkshire, UK) boasts the Humber Bridge, the longest single span suspension bridge in the World. It is really elegant structure, you can walk the bridge. The Master Bridge Engineer has also been known to take people to the top towers if you ask nicely.
Some Photos and WebCams
Technical data
Drains, bridges, tunnels, bunkers, silos, abandoned power stations.
Maybe we're a little spoiled for this here in Sydney Aus., but there are some amazing places to visit under your feet or in some forgotten corner of your own city. Walking a 3km long drain is an amazing experience, and the atmosphere in an abandoned industrial site can be awe inspiring.
Just keep safety in mind at all times (especially don't go in drains if there is *any* chance of rain), and leave the sites as you found them. Of course, it can be illegal to be in drains, or other government property, but the police around here don't seem to mind too much if you look harmless and explain your crazy hobby.
There may be an urban exploration group in your city already, if not, find some like minded friends and start searching out the cool places. They are out there!
Sydney Cave Clan
Melbourne Clan
Cthulhu loves you.
Oh yes, and while you're there, do a little distillery visiting. Seven single malts on one island.
Slainte!
It's not about renouncing desire, it's about realizing that the Kilimanjaro does not exist, and so there is nothing to desire.
The pumped-storage power station at Cruachan (Scotland) is worth a visit - a huge cave hollwed out of solid rock with a hydroelectric power station inside. It's a net consumer of electricity, but still turns a profit by selling and buying electricity at the right times.
The catacombs in Paris are good, if a little macabre (lined with bones of disinterred corpses from the 19th century).
Around Denmark there are some impresive sea crossings by tunnel/bridge/ship. Denmark to Sweden is half-bridge half-tunnel, via an aritifical island (best seen from the air near Copenhagen airport). There is (I think) still a train route from Germany to Denmark which goes via a ferry - the train gets split into three pieces, goes onto the ferry, and then continues at the other side.
There are a lot of good bridge crossings around, but my favourite are the rail and road bridges over the forth near Edinburgh. A really nice pair of bridges in completely different styles right next to each other.
I'd like to go to most of these sites.
One of Primo Levi's books, "The Wrench" is about a semi-fictional rigger who travels the world working on the construction of oil-rigs, bridges, chemical plants, etc. It's a good read.
There are many other places of interest in Holland, almost all related to water management.
:-) ) If you break the law in Wellington, maybe the police will let you see the foundations in the basement, complete with giant lead-filled shock-absorbers :-) ).
Go and see the afsluitdijk up in the north east take a look around Flevoland (a huge reclaimed area) and IJburg (new islands in Amsterdam built for housing), and the barriers down in Zeeland.
Speaking of Zeeland related things, if you are in New Zealand, go to the Te Papa museum and any other place that has eathquake "proof" related engineering. NZ is a world leader in this (Wellington is not really an ideal place to have built a capital city
Then go and experience London Transport itself, and wonder to yourself "Did this bunch really run a friggin empire? How the fuck did they make this mess?"
If you're from anywhere seriously hot, then you might want to try traveling on the London Underground at peak times in summer. You know... for the masochist in you.
Seriously -- have you ever travelled on the Tube? If so, have you ever travelled on any other comparable train system, such as the NYC subway (don't get me started on the unbearable heat in the stations, the even more unbearable heat in the trains, the noise as the trains squeal their way around corners, the dangerous nature of travelling on it during the day-time, never mind the night...)?
The Tube is wonderful -- nice trains and stations, easy-to-read electronic signs to advise you when the next train is coming (at the platform), or where the next stop is (on the train), and very well interconnected.
Forget the trains anywhere in the mid-east and north-east of the U.S. (the only area of the U.S. with which I'm really familiar) -- horrible connections, late as anything, frequently breaking down, no stations anywhere, uncomfortable crowded dingy stations and trains... Oh, and no cabs if you live more than a few miles out of the main city in your location.
The London system has suffered a similar plight to the NYC system -- massive population growth (both in terms of residents and of visitors) which has over-burdened the elderly infrastructure. But if you compare the relative ages of both cities and look at how they've each handled the problem, London has done a far better job, in my opinion.
I tend to do national parks on my vacations, so I don't have a lot to suggest, but the VLA in Socorro, NM is a cool spot to visit. Even if you hated Contact (which I didn't).
http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/
This guy was a hugely famous Victorian engineer and was responsible for many of the great engineering feats of his day. If you go to the UK, you can leave from Paddington station (which he built) on the Great Western Railway (which he built) and cross over the longest brick arch span in the world (yup, that too) go through one of the longest un-lined tunnels in the world (that too), arrive in Bristol at Temple Meads Station (guess who...? :-) Walk along the city canals to the SS Great Britain, a record-setting trans-atlantic steamer (yup, Brunel too), past there to Brunel Lock and then look up to the Clifton Suspension Bridge, which, at the time, was the longest span in the world, (and was completed just after his death.) There's a statue of him in Bristol too. He recently came second (to Churchill) in a debate to decide the Greatest Briton. That's just a small selection of the things he did, the UK is peppered with his work, almost all of which his peers said could never be built, so He did it anyway.
:-)
Ya gotta dig his attitude
Paul
..has all it's very considerable collection sorted chronologically. (as does the British National Art Gallery) For instance, they seem to have every iteration of the microscope (from originals of the first one). They have one whole hall of scale-models of ships, from submarines to QE2, and everything in between. I visited London, and the S&TM over 20 years ago and the experience is still very vivid. The collections may have changed or been rotated but I am sure they are still amazing.
One of the coolest places I saw when I was doing a lot of travelling last year was Dover, England. Dover's in an interesting place given its geography, and it's been an interesting place for a long time-- The grounds of Dover Castle contain everything from a 1st century Roman lighthouse all the way up through tunnels dug into the white cliffs in the 1900s that they ran Operation Dynamo from, and lots of stuff from eras between them.
It's quite interesting if you're into engineering over the centuries...
The Arecibo dish is something to see. Plus, sunny Puerto Rico is a nice vacation spot anyway.
o /
http://www.space-technology.com/projects/Arecib
What's so interesting about a controlled explosion?
Allowing that we're really talking about rapid combustion, not an explosion (can you say Challenger?), most of us get to work thanks to controlled explosions of petroleum products.
OK, not in any order of preference:
* Smithsonian Museum, Washington DC: see a V2
* Science Museum, London UK: see completed copy of the Difference Engine
* Computing Museum, Berlin DE: lots of old mechanical calculators and Zuse's machines
* Bletchley Park, UK. Careful, I think it's only open one weekend a month.
One that no seems to have heard of (even in the UK) is the falkirk wheel. How do you connect 2 canals at different heights? Why, build a massive farigroud ride for boats of course!
In the UK, there are often tours of the city sewers, nuclear power stations (although you dont always get to see the actual reactor room, sometimes its just an orrible set of static displays),bridges, decommisioned nuclear and WWII bunkers, etc.
/ www.bbc.co.uk/kent/do_see/days_out/power_st ation.shtml
http://www.sussexhistory.com/sewers.htm
http:/
**TODO** Steal someone elses sig.
Here are some places I want to visit:
THE AMERICAS:
1. The Inka trail in Peru ($300 for 2-day walk, must travel in a group) even includes a tunnel and ends at Machu Picchu. Numerous guides offer tours, just shop around in Cusco.
2. Yaxchilan Ruins on Usumacinta river in Mexico include ruins of possibly oldest bridge in North America. Great adventure to see. I was stopped by the army who sealed off the entire area. To be flooded by dam. link1, link2 to people who have been there
3. Mexico - their pyramids (Sun,Moon,Oaxaca) are built without knowledge of the wheel (even though their kids played with toy carts) and without horsepower.
4. ESO telescopes in Chile ESO visitor information - must register far in advance.
5. Hoover Dam, Golden Gate Bridge (US)
EUROPE:
1. Cloaka Maxima, Ancient Rome
2. Reconstruction of Frauenkirche, Dresden
3. World War II Bunkers and SS-20 silos (Bouda) in Czech Republic (Visitors only permitted May-August)
4. TGV trains in France
5. Ancient Mines (Cornwall and Sinai- Egypt
The best vacation I ever had was on Hawaii. The Highlights were the Keck Observatory and Kilauea volcano and lava fields.
When we visited the Keck we drove from sealevel to 4,200 m (14000ft). We got a free guided tour of the Keck observatory and the NASA telescope. I don't know if they still do that. It was an awe inspiring experience.
Another day we spent hiking around the world's most active volcano. Near the end of the day we hiked to where the lava was flowing into the ocean. This was the most terrifying and exciting thing I have ever done. Better than any rollercoaster
While not exactly a geek site, I thought the French tank museum (french language only -> Musee des Blindes or another opinion) in Saumur was tres kewl.
General George S. Patton(the movie) studied at the Cavalry Academy in Saumur.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
So yes, I go to London from time to time. There are notable exceptions such as the Jubilee line, but mostly it's pretty old and rickety. And I will never forget the first time I travelled peak time at summer time!
:)
Have I been on a comparable system? Yes. The Metro in Istanbul [that's Turkey, a "developing" nation] is an example to the world.
It's cheap, quick, punctual, and comfortable. The stations are nice, well designed, and clean. Now when I say clean, I mean like a friggin operating theatre! Graffiti? None. Absoluteley none. Metal detectors and armed guards included for your peace of mind.
Now I'm gonna sit back and wait for grinning prick Blair to toss the tube system, which is deveoping slowly but surely into something from this century, into private hands, like the rail system, post office, etc. Oh hang on it's a "Public - Private Partnership"... Doesn't that sound all lovely, warm and cosy? All this privatisation has an unreported purpose, but I can't be arsed to retype IMF/World Bank documents in this post, and it's outside the topic.
Coming soon to a sky near you: Privatised Air Traffic Control!
Ali
Ph33r m3!!!
I imagine that other companies offer tours as well. Right next to us is Tucker Sno-Cat where they make those cool transporters.
We have a local company who makes trolleys. I called them up one day because I found out about an electric battery powered trolley they had made and the guy was more than happy to talk to me about it.
You keep your posts off of Kansas sites, buddy - that's my turf!
But yes, Greensburg is a good stop - I ususally stop there on my way back home from parts west as it gives me a good chance to stretch my legs and get some coffee.
But have you ever been to any of the other sites in Kansas I listed in my previous post?
www.eFax.com are spammers
Racing is an addiction that makes heroin look like a vague hankering for something crunchy.
You absolutely can't miss the U.S. Space and Rocket Center - it's the Earth's largest space museum, featuring a real Saturn V moon rocket lying on the ground and a mock-up standing on end, a slew of other rockets (Redstone, Atlas, Jupiter C, Hermes, V-2, a Shuttle mock-up, real engines all over the place, and more), space station presentation, Skylab mock-ups, full lunar lander and rover exhibits, and more, plus a helicopter and some missiles. They have a moon rock on display. (You can touch the one at the Smithsonian.) There's an IMAX Dome theater showing something spacey, a climbing wall, Mars rides, a centrifuge, and a really fast outdoor elevator to nowhere they call "Space Shot."
I hate call waitin`~+~~~
NO CARRIER
I took the Empire Builder last year to and from Seattle. North Dakota's farmland was interesting mostly because it showed how large Lake Agassiz was -- although sunflower fields in the fall are nice to see, as long as they're not the Ringworld type. Montana had eroded hints of hills in the distance, with scattered oil wells in sight, and the Rockies leaping up to surround us with the extreme Glacier Park region after traversing one steel spider web which from the train was most impressive if you looked down. The Rockies to go by quickly due to most travel being at night when sleep telescopes the time, although the Washington tunnel traversals might be during daylight depending upon the time of year.
In Seattle, the obvious tech landmarks are the Space Needle and Monorail. A glance at a tourist guide shows that there also is a significant science museum also there at the World's Fair site, and the nearby food court offers the usual shopping-mall style of varied family dining (more extreme foods are nearby and as usual you get to decide how important and how to find particular food preferences in an unfamiliar city). We chose to stay in a hotel a couple of blocks from that site, using the Monorail for daily trips to downtown. Note that at the southern stop, go down to the lower level of that shopping mall and you find another interesting engineering project -- a bus tunnel around most of downtown with free rides most of the time. Techies might note that near the southern end of the tunnel (near the Amtrak station) is the area marked on tourist maps as "International", which is mostly Japanese/Chinese shops -- I wasn't shopping for electronics and no tech products caught my eye, although animation/manga was easily found as well as a "toy" store featuring related plastic products and models. Seattle voters want the Monorail expanded, so in coming years that construction might also be something to note. For that matter, one could include use of the numerous Seattle transit methods as a project in itself -- the geography of Seattle forces use of many modes of transport. Oh, GameWorks is also in northest downtown -- something that is not yet in most cities.
There also is a retired ore ship at a Duluth dock for touring. Check the schedule -- I don't know if they operate in the winter.
Also in Duluth is a small marine museum near the Lift Bridge, and the Railroad Museum is full of rail vehicles (also daily trips along the lakefront -- if you take the short 90 minute trip and they stop to grab a pizza from a delivery guy standing by the tracks it's for the crew; if you want pizza, take the Pizza Train).
But every science museum is likely to have something of interest. The Chicago museum doesn't have the delightful musical staircase which is in the St. Paul museum. It's particularly delightful because I think the signs are purposefully subtle, so standing on the landing one can watch people's reactions when they realize they are the cause of the sounds. (Each stair step has a light beam across it which causes a foot to trigger a chime; the doors reduce outside sounds so the chattering chimes become quickly apparent to anyone with some awareness of their surroundings; the staircase is an obvious route for moving between two exhibit areas but it looks like only a passageway, yet is not such a major route that it is crowded with routine traffic which would disguise the patterns caused by movement)