On our yokel trip to London recently we spent an afternoon in the Science Museum. One Elec Engineer and one Mech Engineer had an incredible day bouncing from exhibit to exhibit.

There are too many things to describe but a few of the highlights for me were.

The entire Space exploration area:

The Spitfire exhibition:

The Babbage Difference Engine:

The V2 Rocket:

The VTOL aircraft:

Sinclair Calculator:

Disappointments? They had nothing on computing since the 1970′s. I’d love to see a display going from the Altair through the TRS-80, ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro, Apple II, IBM PC up to a modern ultralight laptop. Ditto one on mobiles from the original analogue bricks right up to the Nokia N95 and Apple iPhone.

It was of course filled with school kids who had clearly been brought by non-science teachers “count how many stars are in the flag there, children” as opposed to “think about landing on the moon in this, children”.

There is a big gadget shop at the entrance which we found hard to leave at the end. A lot of the stuff was gimmicky but there was plenty of genuinely interesting “sciencey” things.

You owe it to yourself and your kids to go here and have a blast but enjoy yourself too. We are where we are today because of the things on display there.

UPDATE; I think this explains the lack of computers.