Tuesday, August 02, 2011

Museum Quality


Went to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) with my daughter and her husband and two boys today. Fascinating place, lots of hands-on, and while the boys had been to the Children's version, they had not visited this one. 


The big draw was a temporary exhibit of video games, going back to Pong, many of which were lit and playable, a video arcade of the ages, as it were. You name it, they had one, and a lot of the old hardware upon which it had first been played.


How old am I? I remember playing Pong when it first came out. 


Oddly enough, the boys got tired of that pretty quick and we moved to the other exhibits.


A couple hours and we were done–a lot of stimuli doing such stuff, wheels and bells and plastic balls in giant blowguns and all manner of things scientific -- big Van de Graf generators, Jacob's Ladders, magnets, stop-motion animation ...


Wears you out in a hurry, chasing the grandsons through the place. But fun. 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Museums are great places to see what was once "the thing!" and is now Art or the Past. Go to the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in NYC and look at their industrial exhibit. Apple Mac, chairs, stools, toasters.

If you liked video games, they are trying to raise funds for a Videogame History Museum, http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1760848975/the-videogame-history-museum?ref=live. It could be very cool.

And for bringing science to the kids, nothing beats the Franklin Institute.

-Anonymouse