A Geek Atlas reader writes from Austria

I received the following mail from one Thomas Kober from Vienna:

First of all, thank you for writing the Geek Atlas. I just returned from a journey to Paris with the Geek Atlas in my bag and I was not disappointed. With it, I probably would not have spent many exciting and cheerful hours wandering through the city and looking for more Arago Medallions.

Your book also inspired me to look for places myself, that were not in the Geek Atlas, and publish them on my blog. I already found some interesting places, eg. the grave of Urbain Le Verrier in the cemetry of Montparnasse or the statue of 16th century flemish mathematician Simon Stevin in the old town of Bruges.

I am also writing hands-on reviews of the places I visited with the Geek Atlas. I also wanted to give you some practical information I found out about them which you might consider helpful or interesting. The Observatory in Paris is closed through the whole of August (which was when I was visiting Paris, my fault as I did not check the home page beforehand).

And the Musee des Arts et Metiers is just amazing. Its one of the best museums I have ever been to and the best of all, it was for free (Its free for every EU citizen aged 25 or below). To see Pascals machines was a very special moment.

I would be happy if you find the time to visit my blog and maybe I can inspire you to visit one of the places I discovered as the Geek Atlas is inspiring me (The Simon Stevin statue will be my first post, which I will publish soon).

My next travels will be to Brno to visit the Mendel Museum and to Bratislava to perhaps discover a geeky place that you have missed :-)

Kind regards from Vienna,

Thomas Kober

PS: I rushed to the grave of Ludwig Boltzmann right on the day I bought the Geek Atlas, as although I am living in Vienna for almost 10 years, I didn't know about the equation on his grave...

I love to get mail like that. Anyone else had a great Geek Atlas experience?

Also, here's Thomas' first blog entry on the statue of Simon Stevin. Looks marvelous!

An interview with me about The Geek Atlas

John Baichtal interviewed me recently about The Geek Atlas:

John Baichtal: What is the most notable omission from the first book?

John Graham-Cumming: Hard to say because there's not one glaring omission that people bring up consistently. Everyone's got a favorite place and some aren't in the book. Lots of people wanted more NASA locations, but that would probably fill an entire Geek Atlas! Lots of people wanted more sites in Asia. If there's a second book I'd include some optical telescopes because for some reason (a mystery even to the author) there are none in the first book.

You can read the full interview here.

The Geek Atlas Companion

The Geek Atlas has been out for a year now, and there's been an iPhone version for a while.

But now there's a special companion application for the book: The Geek Atlas Companion. O'Reilly developed this as a counterpart to the book.


My favorite part of the application is the ability to find places from the book that are near you. The application has all 128 places in it with their coordinates (just like the book) and using the iPhone's GPS it can give you a list of places near you. Each place has a small summary of what you'll see there, but not the complete book text. The application is designed as an add on and not a replacement for the book itself.

A fun part that O'Reilly developed is a quiz based on the book. Multiple choice questions lead you through some of the science that's covered in The Geek Atlas.

Finally, there's a strong community component where users are encouraged to upload their photographs of locations in the book. The application gives rapid access to other people's photographs of the locations.

An interview with me about The Geek Atlas

This appeared on CNET this week:

Last week, Graham-Cumming took 45 minutes out of his schedule to sit down and talk over instant message with me about the book, his approach to traveling as a geek, and why his shyness didn't stop him from getting the British government to apologize for its terrible treatment of the famous scientist Alan Turing.

Q: Welcome to 45 Minutes on IM. How did you come up with the idea for the "Geek Atlas"?

John Graham-Cumming: I came up with the idea while working in Munich when I visited the Deutsches Museum. I had never heard of it, and I discovered it's a fantastic science museum that clearly rivals places like the Science Museum in London and the Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. I thought to myself: someone must have written a travel book for nerds. A Lonely Planet for Scientists. I really wanted it because I was embarrassed that I didn't know about the Deutsches Museum. That evening I made a list of places I'd been around the world and came up with about 70. From that, the idea of the "Geek Atlas" was born.

Read the rest here.

Sun, sand, sea and... science

The kind folks at The Times let me be a guest blogger and write about a fascinating corner of England that contains what I've termed the Telecom Triangle:

Sea, sand, sun and... science. Science? With the better weather finally arriving on British shores thoughts of summer holidays aren't far from many people's thoughts. But most people are unlikely to be planning to include scientific attractions in their itinerary.

Yet there's no need to switch your brain off while taking time off this summer. The world is dotted with sites of scientific interest and many of them are worth visiting. Having spent my working life travelling and sneaking off for scientific side trips I've compiled a guide book, The Geek Atlas, for the technological traveller.

If you're staying in Britain this summer then look no further than Cornwall for three sites of outstanding scientific interest. Not far from Land's End is a telecommunications triangle of places that trace the history of long distance communications.

You can read the rest here.