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Museums for Engineers: Intro

June 3, 2013
Send in images and info from museums engineers would appreciate.

The U.S. has a wealth of museums that feature everything from great (and not so great) art, centuries of history, and the wildly diverse flora and fauna, rocks, and geology of nature. We even have museums for voodoo, macabre medical oddities, and cowboys & cowgirls, as well as ones for  sex, drugs, and rock and roll. But we’re also lucky to have a long list of museums that seem to target engineers. Two of my favorites are the MIT Museum and The Collection of Scientific and Historical Instruments at Harvard University. But there are also museums for cars and trucks, airplanes and hot-air balloons, and innovation and inventors.

Please let me know which museum you have visited that you think would be interesting to engineers. (It doesn’t have to be in the U.S.) And if you do visit one, take some pictures, jot down a line or two that describes what the image shows, and email them to me (at [email protected]; put museum in the subject line). I plan on posting them here, along with links to the museum.

To get started, here’s an all-too-short gallery put together by fellow editor Lindsey Frick of some of the planes and engines on exhibit at the Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Fla.. And below is a personal favorite of mine at the museum, a T-2 Buckeye, the type of jet in which I "enjoyed" my first Navy training flights at VT-10.

About the Author

Stephen Mraz Blog | Senior Editor

Steve serves as Senior Editor of Machine Design.  He has 23 years of service and has a B.S. Biomedical Engineering from CWRU. Steve was a E-2C Hawkeye Naval Flight Officer in the U.S. Navy. He is currently responsible for areas such as aerospace, defense, and medical.

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