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Summer in North America 2018 Part 20 - Living Computers Museum and The Spheres

"Come in. Geek out," is what the large signage on the side of the building said. The Living Computers: Museum + Lab is located a little further south from the other places we visited the day prior, but it's really not that far. There is free parking available right by the entrance door. We parked, got in, paid for the entrance fee, and went to the top floor as the staff recommended.






As soon as we got out of the elevator, we saw a display of computer memories, from very large ones to tiny little ones. It was very interesting to see how fast they became so much smaller with so much larger capacity.







They had a working Atari console that you can use, complete with retro-looking couches. Miss Kiki gave it a try, but understandably it's not as exciting as the Nintendo Switch she uses at home.






All around the room, they told the story of different computer companies. How they started, how they grew, and how some of them became obsolete. With the stories they had old computers from that particular story on display. Most of them are in working condition and you are able to play around with it. Until that day, I didn't know that Texas Instruments actually used to make computers! I've always thought they only made great scientific calculators.

Check out this old Macbook Pro. It seems so archaic now but I still remember wanting to buy it when I was in university!










DH went inside the server room (I think), I'm not sure what's in there...





We also got to try this punch card that was the only way to write programs. The cards were available to use and take home as a souvenir.









After we've had enough of that floor, we went down to the mezzanine. They had a station set up where visitors can try their hands on creating video games.








We continued going down from the mezzanine to the ground floor and found displays of computers and technology used now and in the future. They had a small display from the famous teamLab from Japan, some robots, and more. Most of the displays are hands on, so we had a lot of fun trying things out.









A small section of the ground floor is dedicated to a souvenir shop, and in there they have some books for sale that looked good.







It was past lunch time and we were starving. We drove over across the street to Peco's Pit, an open air diner that's famous for their pulled pork. DH and I shared a portion of pulled pork on nachos, medium spicy; and we ordered pulled pork with baked potato non-spicy. The portions were very large, but they were very good!



After we had lunch we drove to the Spheres. Since they opened earlier this year, this eye-catching construction has attracted many visitors. The garden tour inside the sphere was not available at that time, but we were able to go to the Understory, a small museum where visitors can learn more about The Spheres and Amazon.




















That was the end of our trip to Seattle (other than a bit of shopping on the way back to BC)...
Thanks for reading and please look forward to the next post!





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