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Steam punk extreme
Topic Started: Nov 3 2009, 10:00 PM (112 Views)
New Harumf
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Bloodthirsty Unicorn
I took a couple of days off from work, and yesterday I went to The Henry Ford (a museum in Dearborn Michigan) and was very, very surprised.

The entire museum is a homage to American industrialism - steam punk extrordinare! It pretty much has on display everything that created the wealth of our nation, from agriculture, to the assembly line, to steam powered everything, from machines that created gears for future machines, to steam powered looms, to steam powered glass making machines. It displayed in a single building how American productivity grew to surpass the world and make us the wealthy nation we are today - unfortunately, all I could think of was how our current government is trying to destroy all that wealth.

Two highlights:
1. sitting in the cab of the C&O 4-12-4 locomotive that is soooo huge you can't even see the track from the driver's seat, and being able to actually operate the dead man's throttle and the break while leaning out the window and trying to see ahead of you. It was huge!! I have never, ever had the chance to sit in the driver's seat of anything so powerful before. It dwarfed everything else in the museum!

2. they had the actual bus from Montgomery, Alabama that Rosa Parks was arrested on for refusing to give up her seat to a white man. You got to sit on the bus, right in her seat if you wanted to, though I couldn't, and listen to a recording of her voice describe the events of that day - at the time it was just Don and me in the bus, and I actually shivered listening to the story, and wondering what I would have the courage to go to jail for. It was very powerful.

Then there were the steam powered tractors that dwarfed every other tractor I had ever seen. And a Stanley Steamer auto, and the Limo Kennedy was killed in, and the limo that took Reagan to the hospital after he was shot, and the chair Lincoln was sitting in when he was assassinated!

What a museam of Americana. I've been to the Smithsonian, and the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, but I have never been so facinated by any collection like what they had at the Henry Ford. It's not a big or really impressive museum, but it is just so American. It is in the Greenwood Village, which I have to visit next summer when it is open - it has the original Wright Bros. bicycle shop (moved there), and Edison's Menlo Park lab (moved there) along with the building where Ford built his first "motor car" (the real Macoy). The Museum even has a display commerating the 100's (yes, hundreds) of American car manufacturers that came and went in the teens, twenties and thirties of the last century.

The whole place displayed the building blocks of wealth, from the making of fabricated chairs, to the use of post WWII metal manufacturers for home building, to the growth of aviation as a commercial venture, to the manufacturing of fire arms. It also displayed American history from the Mayflower Charter, to the Declairation of Independence, to the Constitution, to the Civil War, to women's suffrage, to the Civil Rights Movement.

Wow!

Oh, did I mention the cars!! They even had the Oscar Meyer Wiener Mobile!

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Tristan da Cunha
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Science and Industry
Sounds like a fascinating museum. I once had a chance to go but I decided to stay home because I was too lazy at the time. :(
Edited by Tristan da Cunha, Nov 3 2009, 10:53 PM.
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:unsure: Well, on the west coast we have..... nothing :sad:
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Tristan da Cunha
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Science and Industry
At least you have Disneyland... what I would give to be at Disneyland right now...
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Tristan da Cunha
Nov 3 2009, 10:58 PM
At least you have Disneyland... what I would give to be at Disneyland right now...
You have Disneyworld instead.
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Abnar
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Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the lurkiest of them all?
The HF Museum is awesome. I always liked Greenfield Village more when I was a kid, but I recently went to the museum with my coung cousins and had a much greater appreciation for it.

EDIT: I assume you've already been to the DIA, NH? If not, you really should. It's surprisingly good.
Edited by Abnar, Nov 3 2009, 11:12 PM.
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flumes
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CLEVELAND ROCKS!
I feel like I've been there 1,000,000 times. Every field trip ever going to elementary school outside of Detroit!!! Love it! :D
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Nag Ehgoeg
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The Devil's Advocate

Sounds wonderful.
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