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While the Antikythera mechanism (earliest known computer) is housed at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, there is a smaller museum in Athens called the Museum of Ancient Greek Technology, with replicas of the mechanism as well as various greek inventions over the millenia that I knew little to nothing about prior. Lots of times I thought "they never taught me that in any class..."
Highly recommend you add a visit during the busy periods of the more well known tourist attractions in Athens. The personal guide was very engaging, very informative, and I think it was like 5 bucks per person.
http://kotsanas.com/gb/index.php https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
Dr Nick Andronis' replica is currently on display at the WA Museum in Perth, Australia. https://visit.museum.wa.gov.au/boolabardip/reconstructing-an...
I haven't kept up with the channel lately, but Clickspring on YouTube has been building a replica.
thank you for sharing, the few i've had time to watch were very entertaining. would you have time to share anything else in the same area, broadly
Not knowing exactly the limits of broad, I'd say that the content that gets posted here is in the same genre:
https://old.reddit.com/r/ArtisanVideos/
A couple of top picks would be
Project Binky - Retrofitting the drive train from a Toyota Celica GT4 into an Austin Mini:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGSOZAHg1yQHU1tc_3Y5M...
Rebuilding a 1910 English sailing yacht called Tally Ho:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB00JHoTw1TeX82Qw8hoF...
Throwing a couple more recs in here:
- American Sign Museum in Cincinnati (https://www.americansignmuseum.org/)
- not sure what qualifies as a museum but the City Museum in St. Louis is incredible (https://www.citymuseum.org/)
edit: throw the Pacific Pinball Museum in Alameda on here too
For those in the Washington DC area, I really enjoyed the Cold War Museum. The docent working there (in 2015) was really knowledgeable about the material. I enjoyed hearing about how the local area was home to a listening station. Apparently there are large iron deposits in the ground that make for ideal radio reception. During World War 2, a radio operator noticed that he was receiving transmissions from taxi dispatchers in Berlin! The government ended up building a huge ring antenna that could listen to signals from all over the world.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vint_Hill_Farms_Station
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1993/10/04/cutt...
The Cold War Museum
+1 540-341-2008
This is a (fantastic!) project by Simon Willison, co-creator of the Django framework and creator of Datasette.
If you are wondering why the collection is so small, it would appear from the commit history that Simon only adds museums that he has visited himself.
Oh, I hope he comes to Pueblo, CO sometime and checks out the niche museum I volunteer at. We have basically 3 people running it, including Nell Mitchell, who made it all possible: https://coloradostatehospitalmuseum.org/
It's a museum that documents the history of the Colorado State Hospital (Colorado Insane Asylum, when it opened in 1879). I bought a house near it and just walked in one day. Now I'm there two days a week and spend a lot of time doing research for people trying to find out about their relatives that may have been patients.
That looks fantastic! I've added it to my Google Map of museums to visit (1200 and counting).
Thanks! We also open for appointment, in case you can't make our regular hours (Tues and Sat 10-4)! Just let us know and you can come in whenever!
On the topic, if you ever find yourself ever bored in Zagreb, check out the optical illusions and broken relationships museums.
Was just in the illusions museum in NYC that looks exactly the same, and lo and behold it's a franchiser - https://www.museumofillusions.com/. Wonder if Croatia has the most Museums of Illusion per capita in the world :-)
Very cool! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tru4L2uvkoA
Came here to post this :)
I was immediately disappointed to not find https://www.phallus.is/ represented.
The Baked Bean Museum of Excellence was a very niche one near me in South Wales. Think it has closed its doors now though.
For those in Chicago - I highly recommend the International Museum of Surgical Science: https://imss.org/
Tons of old surgical implements, some death masks, and a lot of really interesting information.
I'd love to see a way to add some niche museums. Some suggestions:
The Devil's Rope Museum, about barbed wire: https://barbwiremuseum.com/
The Mutter Museum, a collection of anatomical specimens and antique medical equipment. https://muttermuseum.org/
The Mario Lanza Institute, dedicated to the famed vocalist https://www.mariolanzainstitute.org/
The Museum of Holography in Chicago was really, really cool. Hopefully someday it can be on this list.
I wish it was still open. I was there last in the early 2000's. The story about the museum's closing is pretty sad[1], but the collection was saved.
It looks like there were some public exhibitions in the last few years but there's no permanent space right now. There's a Facebook page[2] from a group trying to resurrect the museum.
[0] https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/museum-holography-mro
[1] https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20150610/west-loop/museum-of...
The Terra Museum of American Art[1] was a fantastic collection of art. I was a co-worker of the former director, so got lots of back story. It's sad to see it gone since Dan Terra's passing.
The Time Museum in Rockford, Illinois[2] was another interesting museum that is no more.
The Mount Horeb Mustard Museum was closed when we visited the town (on a Tuesday)... it's since moved and is apparently still alive near Madison, Wisconsin[3]
Further afield - SF-88 is a former Nike Missile site north of San Francisco. The SALT treaty resulted in the removal of Nike sites in protective rings around many industrial centers in the US. This is the one museum site remaining allowed in the treaty.[4]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_Museum
[2] https://www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/3938
[3] https://mustardmuseum.com/
[4] https://www.nps.gov/places/000/nike-missile-site-sf-88.htm
I'm a big fan of niche museums. Here's a couple neat ones from my home state (MN) that aren't on this site:
The Bakken Museum: https://thebakken.org/
Pavek Museum: https://www.pavekmuseum.org/
I recognize and have been to some of these. Very impressive list overall.
The one thing I'd say surprises me, they include the SF cable car museum but not the NYC transit museum. Both are unique and niche in their own way, the cable car for its wholly mechanical implementation of modern rapid transit from a time before there was even electricity, the NYC transit museum for the fact that it is located in a disused subway station which is still directly connected to the system and the exhibit of historical train cars from the past 100+ years is a real, operational train that they sometimes take out on special excursion runs. For both museums there's something special about how these machines are being used the way they were meant to be used, with actual passengers riding them, in the process being kept alive as well as being preserved.
The Museum of World Religions in Taipei, Taiwan is the most uniquely conceived museum I've ever had the pleasure of exploring. The brainchild of a Taiwanese Buddhist monk who died before it was completed, it aims to explore humanity's shared experience from birth through death, aspects of humanity such as being humbled by the vastness of nature, space and time, and the journey of being dependent, independent, and dependent again as we age. It also celebrates, in a non-denominational way, the religious art and architecture of various religious and philosophical traditions around the world. The architecture and curation are first rate: truly a great experience. Go alone. https://www.mwr.org.tw/
Wonderful project.
The database seems to be growing rather slowly, it has about 100 entries globally; only five entries have been added in 2022.
In sure HN visitors would like to add their own favorite niche museums. Is there an way to add an entry or submit a suggestion?
I originally thought I'd make it open to submissions, but I've since decided it's much more fun as a hobby project if it's just museums I've been to myself.
Maybe I should add a "suggestions" feature though, since this comes up a lot!
Yeah, nothing within 450 miles of where I'm at. Personal local favorite: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_on_the_Rock
House on the Rock is cool, but it's a little bit of a stretch to call it a museum. The mustard museum on the other hand...
Part of the reason I called the site "Niche Museums" is that it gives me the freedom to have a very loose definition of what a museum is! I very much enjoy covering niche roadside attractions on there as well.
Appreciate that this US-centric, but no such inventory can be complete without https://www.phallus.is/, The Icelandic Phallological Museum.
this US-centric
68 locations in the U.S., and 40 in other places.
Throwing this out there - The Strong National Museum of Play (https://www.museumofplay.org/), in Rochester, NY, is a museum entirely dedicated to toys. Most exhibits there are meant for children to interact with them.
I live in the city, and grew up in the area. Many fond memories as a child at this museum. If you have a kid, and are in upstate New York or plan to be soon, I would highly recommend it.
Would the Super Museum count as niche?
Superman Museum in Metropolis, Illinois: https://supermuseum.com/
My favourite is probably the Revenue museum: https://www.revenue.ie/en/corporate/information-about-revenu...
> The Revenue Museum provides a unique window on the many and varied activities of Revenue, from tax collection to customs controls over several centuries.
Big one for tax and customs in Rotterdam also, https://www.bdmuseum.nl/en/
If you're in Rotterdam, the Dutch national Fotomuseum is truly excellent, the best photography-as-art museum in Europe I've seen (Prague's National Technical Museum https://www.ntm.cz/ is superior on the equipment side). Also the Wereldmuseum is excellent, showing a tiny portion of the huge number of state-owned artifacts of Dutch empire from far and wide. Many others are stored in an anonymous archive building to the east of town I have had cause to visit, and is truly impressive. Also, the nearby town of Dordrecht has a good local museum and historic wealth driven by tax and customs at a river confluence. https://www.nederlandsfotomuseum.nl/ https://www.wereldmuseum.nl/ The world is truly full of treasures!
Whats the admission fee?
USS Intrepid in NYC is a museum dedicated to to the aircraft carrier's time in commission and is definitely worth a visit. I suspect that it's probably a lot more locked down now than it was 20 years ago when you could climb all over the aircraft.
Missing:
The National Museum of Funeral History
Surprisingly, zero goth content. Much about presidential funerals, ancient Egypt, Popes, and New Orleans jazz funerals.
It would be nice to have a way to submit museums.
I'm thinking of https://www.umbrellacovermuseum.org/
It might be possible to submit one through the website's GitHub: https://github.com/simonw/museums
No idea how receive the author is to pull requests, though.
As far as in the USA, I like https://roadsideamerica.com
I have been in the Bay Area for 36 years and have never heard mention of the "Golden State Model Railroad Museum."
Thanks for sharing this.
We have a large one down in San Diego at Balboa Park. Similar to this one, but it's 27,000 sq ft, several layouts.
San Diego Model Railroad Museum
As an aside, the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento is a real treasure. And, going with the "railroad", "silicon valley", and "niche museums" themes here, the original Golden Spike from the Transcontinental Railroad ceremony can be seen at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University.
I saw it as a kid. I thought it was glorious.
There are some interesting niche historical museums and sites around Sacramento.
If it counts as a museum, the trains of the first transcontinental railroad at Promontory UT are interesting.
Kids about 7-14 like the Exploratorium. It used to be over by the Palace of Fine Arts.
Most boys roughly 5-15 get a kick out of The Hiller.
In the world, one of the most interesting is the Torture Museum.
In terms of collection, the Cantor at Stanford has quite the concentration of interesting historical and famous objects.
If you ever get to Hamburg, Germany, pay a visit to the remarkable Miniatur Wunderland [0].
... and if you really enjoy niche museums, don't forget the German Museum of Additives [1]!
At Michigan State University they have a Pezz Dispenser and a Moist Towlette museum. Found in the Obervatory.
one month ago (60* comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35590745
* it's funny, the algolia search function sometimes returns one less comment than the actual number