Mechanicrawl: July 12, 2008, San Francisco

The Exploratorium, Long Now Foundation, and Musee Mechanique are sponsoring a walking tour of the amazing mechanical marvels spread along San Francisco's North Shore on July 12 from 3 to 8pm. You already know how wonderful the Exploratorium is, right? Well the Musee Mecanique is another must-see; they have an awesome collection of antique and recent arcade machines, mostly in very good working order. I haven't been to visit the Long Now Museum yet, but they have an Orrery, and models demonstrating the planned workings for several parts of their 10,000-Year clock.

They have the world's most complex mechanical computer (targeting system for the USS Pompanito), and one of the world's largest working steam engines (on the USS Jeremiah O'Brien). There are good intro videos at the Mechanicrawl web site.

Members of any of these institutions can get in free to the whole thing, or it's $15 for adults (less for kids and seniors). I'm going; are you?