Netherlands
The Escher Museum in The Hague houses most of M.C. Escher’s marvelous drawings, optical illusions and almost all of his prints along with his rare lithographs of the Amalfi coast.
Canada
Alexander Graham Bell’s summer home is in Baddeck, Nova Scotia, Canada, where he lived from 1889 to 1922. The house is still owned by the Bell family. A nearby Alexander Graham Bell National Historic contains museum that reflects his varied interests.
United States
The U.S. is not well represented in The Geek Atlas, largely due to tightened security that prohibits visitors to many science museums. The Grand Coulee Dam and the St. Louis Arch are covered, and you can let your children laugh at your past at the Early Television Museum in Hillard, Ohio, dedicated to the mechanics and electronics of television.
The Geek Atlas author John Graham-Cumming calls himself a science junkie who wrote this book, largely because he finds it is easier to learn about dead poets than scientific discoveries, both man-made and natural, such as such as Aurora Borealis and Magnetic North Pole, located “somewhere in Canada,” since it moves about ten kilometers each year.
Each of the 128 places covered is accompanied by a technical abstract including interesting facts, diagrams and equations that increase your understanding. The book is nicely illustrated and indexed, with practical information, web links and even GPS coordinates for online mapping to your destination.
This attractive book, published by O’Reilly Media, is such a technical compendium, rich with facts, it must have been a nightmare to proofread, edit and lay out, and it’s a job well done. The author clearly put in a lot of miles to conduct such thorough and interesting research.
Geek hobbyists don’t need to travel the world to enjoy the book. They will be equally content to delve into The Geek Atlas on a rainy Saturday and enjoy the generous technical examples and stories of these fascinating museums of science and technology.
Article comments