I wrote a photo essay with 20+ of my favourite tech museums in the world, and tried to figure out what makes a great museum in the process.

I am very curious what tech museums you like – and why!

(Will work on any device, but worth checking out on the biggest screen you or your neighbour might have.)

https://aresluna.org/fav-tech-museums/

@mwichary My recommendation: https://this-museum-is-not-obsolete.com/

Not a typical a museum, more like a playground for geeks :)

@mwichary

• Bletchley Park is amazing
• The National Museum of Computing (is next door to Bletchley) also a good visit, but could imagine there might be better versions of these overseas (from UK).

I've always wanted to go here:

https://www.zeppelin-museum.de/en (I am not certain if that counts)

• Griffin museum in Chicago is very good.

Science Museum in London also good (they have a cabinet of Zeppelins).

• Natural History Museum in Paris is good because the display is very modern and quite tech driven. Not like a typical Victorian style museums.

I feel like I haven't been to that many, certainly not outside the UK, so would like to rectify that.

Your site is very nice!

@buherator Thank you! I follow their YT channel and it’s on my list. Are there specific reasons you like them?

@lukeharby Thanks! I almost included Bletchley Park at the bottom since it really seems like a missed opportunity – but it’s still worth a visit for the location and the history.

I don’t know about the Zeppelin Museum! That seems very cool. Thanks!

@lukeharby Are there specific things you like about those kinds of museums? Outside of zeppelins haha

@mwichary Are all of the photos yours? They are very impressive.

@mwichary They present technology as an instrument for art, and you get to play with literally everything (we spent the open hours in full then went back the next day for more). On the flip-side the items are not very well documented, so you often stop to scratch your head what a thing actually is - they are really helpful though and I think this also adds to the "magic" of the place.

@lukeharby Yes! All mine. Thanks!

@mwichary interesting how many of those are on the Netherlands 🤔

@Sh41 I used to live there, and visit regularly. 😀

@buherator Thanks so much for responding!

@mwichary It's amazing to see that the museum in Figueres is quite popular!

@mwichary

This also looks good but I have yet to make the pilgrimage.

https://fakenhamgasmuseum.com/

@mwichary ah! I used to live in Amsterdam a while ago myself 😅

@Sh41 🤝

@mwichary if you like “old tech”, Dansk Datahistorisk Forening” have a (kinda) museum for old technology With focus on technology evolving in Denmark. In Danish, but give it a look. https://datamuseum.dk/
Pictures from collection can be seen here https://datamuseum.dk/wiki/Genstande

@mwichary Am I missing a summary list? The map navigation is neat, but I would love to just see a list and I feel like it's not obvious how to get that without clicking a tag?

@glennf No list yet! I want to make one, but it is a more complex project because I want to solve it for other long essays, too.

For this one I added better intra-page linking, so making small steps towards a better nav system. Another long essay is pretty much done, but blocked on me figuring it out.

@glennf As you know me, I’m always pushing for minimalistic nav, which complicates this, esp. on mobile!

@mwichary you have angered someone from near-but-not-quite Barcelona by calling Terrassa "North of Barcelona" lol

I've been willing to go there for some time, but scheduling with a group of friends who work/study on weekends is hard; it always turned out to be closed the days we were free, and now it's closed until july for renovations. Hoping I can go there soon~

@frikinin Not my fault Terrassa doesn’t have the name recognition, ha

Thank you for all the suggestions! Will respond later in the day.

I just thought it would be good to also pay it forward by linking to a few sites I know collect good museums, incl. Niche Museums by @simon. They’re in the footer now!

@mwichary yeah, i know that's how it is with international stuff; though i was mostly confused with Figueres keeping its name but not Terrassa

Also, just a small complaint, your map has Figueres south-east of Terrassa, should be the other way around!

@frikinin I think that’s fair! But also maybe a good signal? Terrasa is “within Barcelona’s range,” but Figueres requires a standalone trip and is not near a bigger city?

Let me check the map, thanks for reporting!

@buherator @mwichary

My friends partner runs that museum.

@mwichary Such wonderful photos!

I'm surprised System Source in Baltimore didn't make your list?

Add a moment of silence for the dearly departed Living Computer Museum in Seattle. So glad I got to see it in 2017.

@isonno I liked it! But not as much as the others I listed. It’s not meant to be an exhaustive list, but more of a list of *exemplary* museums.

@mwichary I meant a nav list—like, how can I see without scrolling all the stuff on this long page? Or I am still not getting it?

@glennf Doesn’t exist now! Map is the closest to that idea.

@isonno I miss Living Computers and what a tragic story its disappearance was. I think this was the first “hands on” museum that I really saw and the volunteers there were amazing. Since then, HCM in .nl recaptured some of the “hands on” magic.

@mwichary Shakes fist gently in your direction

@glennf I think a list is tricky out of the box because there is not a standard “go back to the list” navigation – people might not think of clicking the back button because the back button is for inter-page not intra-page stuff. And I didn’t want to have “go back to the top” links everywhere. So that’s partly why it became a more complex project in my head.

But the intra-page linking elsewhere on the page is now better, so I’m chipping away at it.

@glennf This is similar to web footnotes for me – on many pages clicking the footnote throws you somewhere to the bottom, and I think that’s a horrible experience and made me scared of clicking on footnotes on sites. So I’m using my blog to rethink those experiences and see if my ideas work and if my fears are real… but it all alas takes time.

@frikinin Should be better now. I think I just swapped them by accident in another geographical faux pas.

@mwichary all right, I guess I better just read the whole thing!

@glennf Just grab the scrollbar and shake it!!!!!!!

@mwichary like a Polaroid?

@glennf There are two kinds of people: those who shake like a Polaroid, and those who shake like an 8-Ball.

@mwichary This is inspiring me to run down all my type and printing museum visits. Which includes an incredible half of a floor at the Czechia technology museum.

@glennf Oh, where is that! I have not heard of that one.

@mwichary In Prague. I was blown away. No curator or docent. The security guards in Prague museums don’t seem to speak anything but český jazyk (I tried English, German, Italian, and even rudimentary French) so I used Google Translate to tell a guard nearby how absolutely fantastic the collection was. He later made sure I saw a cool interactive exhibition I missed.

@glennf Thanks for sharing! I’ve been to Prague, but it was too short. I will add it to the list.

By the way, this is the second phototypesetting keyboard I see where the Z is crossed out like this. I am now very curious where did this convention come from.

@glennf Is it this one? Apparently I already had it bookmarked, ha.

@mwichary @glennf
Somebody’s Z’s looked like 2’s?

@AccordionBruce @mwichary @glennf

Apparently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_with_stroke#Allographic_variant_of_Z_and_%C5%BB

I learned to write Z's that way in elementary school (Argentina, 1980s). Nowadays no one uses that variant; probably overwhelmed by exposure to strokeless Z's in print and screens.

@angelastella @AccordionBruce @glennf The funny (and unrelated) thing in Poland is that Ƶ (Z with stroke) is an alternative writing of Ż, probably because Ź also exists.

But: I don’t think I have ever seen keyboard typography get involved here, and suddenly two typesetting keyboards appeared!

@mwichary https://www.ntm.cz/en/for-visitors/opening-hours/main-building-in-pragu Humorously, I got off the tram, turned the wrong direction, went into a giant old Communist era building, paid for a ticket, started walking around, and discovered I was in the agriculture museum. The staff at the front desk were pleasantly amused, refunded me, and pointed me across the street. The agriculture museum looked awesome too! Next trip to Prague. Was only there about 2 1/2 days which was too few.

@glennf I was also there for not very long, attached to a conference talk that also went horribly wrong (not because of anything I did).

@mwichary @glennf wait, why is the back button not working for achor navs?

@slightlyoff It works, but I think it’s conceptually confusing.

@slightlyoff E.g. It might feel dangerous to click on back because you might feel like you’re going to go back to a different page – and this actually happens on some sites that do intra-page scrolling poorly/without adding to the history stack.

@slightlyoff I generally think # fragments/anchors have always been slightly confusing in behavior, since the early days of the web. Arriving at the page scrolled down, for example, without realizing.

@slightlyoff Don’t know what the right solutions are, but that always felt underdesigned to me across browsers. I always felt there should be some light Table Of Contents experience in every browser tied into #. Maybe related to the scrollbar somehow. (I now have a dejavu to Opera maybe experimenting with this? Eons ago? Or maybe this was TOC across pages via <link> metadata.)

Sorry for a long thread ha

@slightlyoff For example in this new essay I have some intra-page links, but I added ↑ and ↓ decorations to them to denote they’re different. I don’t think this is perfect or anything, but I’m playing with this. Back button still works, but I think it needs more than that.

@slightlyoff Also want to add << >> nav to Figma and it’s a lot of similar challenges.

@slightlyoff Did you like my premature long thread apology

@mwichary Yes and that purple dot to its left is the agriculture museum! You can see how they are easy to confuse.

@glennf What if you missed out on an even better museum than the one you loved! I guess that’s a “nice problem to have.”

@glennf Also, indeed,

@mwichary Reference eludes me as a barely Office watcher!

@glennf

@mwichary
I'm sure you are drowning in suggestions; yet may I offer the Speelklok Museum in Utrecht? Admittedly it is a bit niche, but well worth an hour or two, especially if you wait for the tour, as the guide will play some of the musical automata.
https://www.museumspeelklok.nl/en/

In the same theme, le Musée des Instruments de Musique or MIM in Brussels has a rich collection, and offers a headphones box where you can enter the number of an instrument and hear a sample.
https://www.mim.be/

@DenOfEarth Thanks for these! I want to be drowning, ha. The headphone thing is such an interesting idea!

@mwichary @lukeharby just chiming in to say that I too love Zeppelins and have been to the museum in Friedrichshafen a couple of times. It's nice, I especially loved walking through the reconstructed airship cabins. The building is great too, a former Bauhaus train station. The museum restaurant is in the old station buffet, worth a visit. I wish there were tours to the former airship hangars too...

@mwichary loved your post by the way, such a great list and with wonderful images. Made me want to travel immediately.

@mwichary Not much to recommend that you didn't cover already, maybe the Verkehrshaus in Luzern, Switzerland, which is kind of the opposite of boring, with a million activities for kids amongst old locomotives and working models, but thin on other aspects of technology. Still a must of us nerdy Swiss kids.
The Deutsche Museum in Munich has a section on mining that I remember being quite impressed by.

@timtom Thanks so much for all of these and the kind words! I used to live in Zürich in 2006 – very overdue for a trip back.

@mwichary Nooo I was in Krakow this past summer and had that museum on my visit list, but it didn't make the family's priorities! (We definitely saw a lot of good stuff, though.) Next time!

@elb It’s in Kazimierz which is also an interesting area to explore!

@nieldk Thanks so much!

@mwichary next time you’re in the Sauk, pay a visit to The Cave and Arcade Archive in Stroud, Glos.

Run by @rmcretro and others (Holly, Richard, Dan, Jason) it’s a truly hands on experience.

@jsbilsbrough @rmcretro Thanks for the recommendation!

@mwichary Amazing list (have bookmarked for myself). My grandparents lived down the road from the Marconi station on Cape Cod which has a little museum https://www.chathammarconi.org

@bzotto Thanks!!!

@mwichary (Really? I always thought it was square footage ;-) )

@mwichary You already have a bunch of my favorites.

The Architecture and Design collection at Museum of Modern Art in New York is pretty amazing and has more technology, from a design perspective, than you might think

The Exploratorium in San Francisco is more educational than historical, but a fantastic hands-on technology museum nonetheless
https://www.exploratorium.edu

The National Museum of Mathematics is similarly good, but also somewhat tangential to your list
https://momath.org

@grwster Thanks for these! I was there at the old Exploratorium, and the new one too, but it has been a long time.

@lukeharby Thanks!

@mwichary - do check out https://lamanufacture-roubaix.com/en/

@axel_hartmann Thanks! I’ve been there! Not long ago: https://flickr.com/photos/mwichary/albums/72177720331070940

@mwichary FYI I haven't been here yet, but I've had it bookmarked for next time I'm in Ohio: https://www.earlytelevision.org/museum.html

@bzotto I’m going there in like 10 days, ha! Literally just locked in that road trip and confirmed they are open.