Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, Illinois

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Museum of Science and Industry ^[1]
E. 57th Street and Lake Shore Drive
Chicago, IL 60637
(773) 684-1414

The Museum of Science and Industry (MSI) is located in Chicago, Illinois, USA in Jackson Park, in the Hyde Park neighborhood adjacent to Lake Michigan. It is housed in the former Palace of Fine Arts from the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. Initially endowed by Sears, Roebuck and Company president and philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, it first opened in 1933 during the Century of Progress Exposition. It is also the largest science museum in the western hemisphere.

Among its diverse and expansive exhibits, the Museum features a working coal mine, a German submarine (U-505) captured during World War II, a 3,500-square-foot (330 m²) model railroad, the first diesel-powered streamlined stainless-steel passenger train (Pioneer Zephyr), and the Apollo 8 spacecraft which flew the first humans to the Moon.

The Museum has over 2,000 exhibits, displayed in 75 major halls. The Museum has several major permanent exhibits. The Coal Mine re-creates a working deep shaft bituminous coal mine inside the Museum's Central Pavilion using original equipment from Old Ben #17 circa 1933. Since 1954, the Museum has had the U-505 Submarine, one of just two German submarines captured during World War II, and the only captured one now on display in the Western Hemisphere. In 2004, the Museum opened a pit in the front lawn in front of the East Pavilion that would later become the subterranean McCormick Tribune Foundation Exhibition Hall, brought the U-505 out from behind the East Pavilion, and lowered the U-505 inside, opening The New U-505 Experience on June 5, 2005. Take Flight recreates a San Francisco to Chicago flight using a real Boeing 727-22 jet plane donated by United Airlines. Silent film star and stock market investor Colleen Moore's Fairy Castle is on display, as is The Great Train Story, a 3,500-square-foot (330 m²) model railroad that explains the story of transportation from Seattle to Chicago. The Transportation Zone includes exhibits on air and land transportation, including the 999 Empire State Express steam locomotive, the first vehicle ever to exceed 100 mph. The Transportation Zone also features two World War II warplanes donated by the British government, a Junkers Ju.87R-2/Trop Stuka dive-bomber, one of only two intact Stukas left in the world, and a Supermarine Spitfire. The first diesel-powered streamlined stainless-steel train, the Pioneer Zephyr, is on permanent display in the Great Hall, renamed the Entry Hall in 2008, and a free tour goes through it every 10–20 minutes. Several U.S. Navy warship models are on display. There is a flight simulator for the new F-35 Lightning II.

MSI's Henry Crown Space Center includes the Apollo 8 spacecraft which flew the first mission beyond low earth orbit to the Moon, enabling its crew, Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders to become the first ever human beings to see the Earth as a whole, as well as becoming the first to view the Moon up close (as well as the first to view its far side at all). Other exhibits include an OmniMax theater, Scott Carpenter's Mercury-Atlas 7 Aurora 7 spacecraft, a Lunar Module trainer and a life-size mockup of a Space Shuttle. ^[1,3

Skytamer visited the Museum of Science and Industry on 24 May 2001. The photos shown below were taken on that date with an Olympus C202Z (1.6mp, 1600x1200) digital camera ... at the time it was cutting edge ... no longer so!^[4]