[JulianEdgar]

My favourite:



When we were in the US, we went to the Chicago museum to see it especially. We couldn't believe how the tour guide didn't understand its significance. Even my (then) 10 year old son knew more about it than she did... (Alexander actually patted it and said, "never mind, never mind...")

I am sure no one is interested but this is what I wrote afterwards:

Today we went to the largest technical museum in the western hemisphere – the Museum of Science + Industry, Chicago.

We added this museum primarily because of two exhibits – the wonderful Burlington Zephyr train, and the Spirit of America Land Speed Record car driven by Craig Breedlove. Add to that the U505 German submarine captured by the Americans in WWII – and you’d have to say that there’s a pretty world-class museum.

And seeing these attractions in the flesh was really fantastic.

The Breedlove car – probably the first Land Speed Record car built on a budget – is petite and beautiful. It can hold its head high in appearance and execution, even in the mega-cost company of cars like Donald Campbell’s Bluebird.

The Zephyr – the holder of a lot of railway ‘firsts’ including stainless steel cladding, lightweight engineered truss construction, aerodynamic streamlining and the use of a diesel-powered rail-car set – is exhilarating beautiful.

The U505 – a complete German WWII submarine out of the water on display - is fascinating.

But oh my god. Overall, what a dumbed-down, trivialised, infantile place for the ignorant is this museum! It’s a parody of a museum, a theme park to entertain airheads. Every exhibit had to be equipped with flashing lights, or pre-recorded narration, or animatronic figures. For all the people who cannot read, apparently.

So the incredibly significant Burlington Zephyr train was internally equipped with – and I am not joking – an animatronic donkey. The donkey ‘talking’ to the guide was a major part of the tour. And the tour guide? Like the later submarine tour guide, she’d just memorised a spiel and knew very little about the subject of the tour. Worse, she recited falsehoods. The reason for the light weight of the Zephyr? Cos it was made of stainless steel, not iron she said.

Well, riiiiiight.

The submarine tour guide rushed us past the fascinating parts of this extraordinary machine, and instead paused where we could pretend to be depth charged (the cabin lights inexplicably brightening – not darkening - every time a pseudo depth charge exploded).

Unfortunately, the tour of the U505 was lowest common denominator stuff.

At least the Breedlove car could simply be looked at, without stupid sounds and talking donkeys and ignorant tour guides spouting nonsense.

And the aforementioned exhibits were the best part of the museum: much of the rest was absolute rubbish.

But there were some occasional gems sprinkled among the dross: the 100kW(!) electric light bulb; the Boeing 727 suspended from the roof and wonderfully accessible; the early steam locomotives (but typically, no mention of which were replicas and which were real historic artefacts); the bicycles and the recording barometer that lived through a tornado.

But overall, a lesson in how to not do a museum.