Museum of Science and Industry (was: Interesting places in Ch icago area?)

IIRC, they were in a great exhibit done by IBM -- not just computers, but math, statistics and probability also. I never tired of seeing it. Too bad that exhibit got pulled a number of years ago. Most of the exhibits have corporate sponsors, which often means they have the content and intellectual level of your average TV commercial. There is a new exibit on petroleum that includes two sections with arcade games (car racing and skiing). They are straight, unmodified arcade games. How they relate to petroleum one can only guess -- OK cars use gas, but what a waste of floor space. There are some good exhibits. The one on imaging is about 5 years old and makes good use of computer technology (SGI and Macs, IIRC). They also have one of the Burlington Zyphir trains (1930's stainless steel streamlined diesel). The Navy exhibit is interesing also. The Coal mine is still there, and has been updated. And the model railroad is still there -- a big O-gauge layout sponsored by Santa Fe. It is "computer controlled" and might by on-topic. Bob -----Original Message----- From: Jim Battle [mailto:frustum@pacbell.net] Sent: Tuesday, March 12, 2002 10:56 PM To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org Subject: Museum of Science and Industry (was: Interesting places in Chicago area?) <snip> It was quite influential in my life path. Who knows, maybe I would have turned out the same, but besides all the cool off-topic stuff displayed there, two of the exhibits I still recall and are more on topic as they relate to computers. One exhibit was a little display about the size of a podium. It had an exposed PC board on top with heavy gauge copper in an odd pattern. A metal "pen" was used to draw a digit from 0 to 9, and based on which traces you touched and the sequence you touched them in, it would display what digit you had written. On the front was the schematic of the thing, containing many dozens of transistors. Was it the first palm pilot? This was probably around 1974 or so. The other display I recall vividly was the tic-tac-toe machine implemented as a clacking relay computer. You could see the relays activating behind the plexiglass. <snip> I visited there about five years ago and it didn't hold the same appeal. I don't know if it was just that I had matured and the wonder of the world has been lost, or if the displays just have a different flavor now that doesn't appeal to me. Ah, memories. ----- Jim Battle == frustum(a)pacbell.net