museums

Planetarium projectors are one of the most fascinating devices you never think of. People visit planetariums to take a trip through the cosmos. But according to one man, the projectors themselves are worthy of admiration -- and he has built a museum to prove it.

The Planetarium Projector Museum sits inside an unassuming building in Big Bear Lake, Calif. In a modified military parachute, owner and curator Owen Phairis displays his collection of more than 17 projectors, some of which were made as far back as the 1950s.… Read more

You can't visit too many museums at 3 a.m. in your underwear, but The Big Internet Museum welcomes visitors at any hour, in any attire. Appropriately, the new museum dedicated completely to the Internet exists online only.

The newly opened museum houses seven wings, each devoted to a different category spanning past to present.

In the history wing, visitors can take a nostalgic scroll back to early search engine AltaVista and JennyCAM, Jennifer Ringley's 1996 popular personal Webcam site. The technology wing touches on Usenet, HTML, and Lycos, among others, while the meme wing rounds up such classics as Star Wars Kid, Numa Numa Guy, and Rickroll. Other wing topics include social media, peripherals, gaming, and audio-visual (emoticons, Napster, YouTube). … Read more

The Smithsonian's "Art of Video Games" exhibit has now closed, but games will be on display at another high-profile art museum beginning early next year.

New York's Museum of Modern Art has announced that it's chosen 40 games to display at a new game-specific gallery.

Games selected for display at MoMA go back decades and include the likes of Pac-Man and Spacewar, but also contemporary releases such as Portal and Minecraft.

The games will be on display as part of the museum's Architecture and Design collection at the establishment's Johnson Galleries beginning in … Read more

With the advent of smaller, thinner, and lighter devices, it now seems crazy to think of a computer as a room-sized mechanism meant mostly for government use. But that's exactly what a computer was 61 years ago.

Now, visitors can see what the first hardware designers were doing when they created what is currently the world's oldest working digital computer -- the Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computing from Harwell, or WITCH. The more than half-a-century old device has been restored and rebooted at its home in The National Museum of Computing in Buckinghamshire, England.

"In 1951 the … Read more

Let's go back in time. Way back. Keep going. OK, stop. You're in the Ptolemaic Period. It's somewhere around 304 to 30 B.C. You're in Egypt. You're playing Dungeons & Dragons. Except back then, it's more like Pyramids & Petsuchos.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art owns what may be the world's oldest d20 die. It's made out of serpentine and looks to be in remarkably good shape for its age. … Read more

The story goes that one of the world's greatest geniuses had a slightly different shaped brain than mere mortals. Now anyone can verify the tale for themselves with a new iPad app.

The National Museum of Health and Medicine Chicago launched an interactive app today that has about 350 scanned and digitized slides of Albert Einstein's brain, according to the Associated Press. The goal of the app is to give scientists, students, and anyone else who is curious the opportunity to see into the inner workings of the genius's brain.

"I can't wait to find … Read more

A crowdfunding effort to build a museum to honor scientist Nikola Tesla has surpassed its $850,000 goal by more than $35,000 -- with more than a month to go in the funding drive.

Announced last week by The Oatmeal, aka Matthew Inman, the goal is to build a museum to honor the achievements of Tesla, the inventor and electrical engineer credited with making early strides in wireless communications. The funds will be used to buy land in Shoreham, N.Y., on which Tesla's last laboratory stood.

The land is listed for sale at $1.6 million, but … Read more

LOS ANGELES -- Walking through gallery after gallery of classical European paintings, sculptures, and other antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum here, it's easy to get lost in the history and beauty of the often centuries-old art. Especially if you're toting today's latest mobile technology.

Home to some of the most celebrated European artwork in the world -- and one of the most visited museums in the United States -- the Getty has also become one of the museums most devoted to adopting technology aimed at enhancing guests' experience, as well as at using high-tech tools … Read more

Google Maps is adding some fine art to its database, as it today gives Android users indoor maps for more than 20 U.S. museums. Joining the more than 10,000 indoor maps already available on the service are floor plans for the de Young Museum in San Francisco, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Cincinnati Museum Center, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History, 17 Smithsonian museums, and the Smithsonian National Zoo.

Whether you're conducting a Google Maps search from afar or you're standing at the doorstep of a supported museum, you can … Read more