In general, I like science and technology museums.
When I found out that, due to flight rebookings, following the chaos Air Greenland had caused, I had a full day in Copenhagen, I went for the nearest science museum.
Which turned out to be not so near at all.
The "Danish Museum of Science and Technology" isn't actually in Copenhagen, but in Helsingør, more than 50km away.
I didn't mind that much, as there's a good train connection to Helsingør. And I didn't have anything else planned anyway.
The museum itself is somewhat awkward to reach, as it's a bit outside of town, tucked away somewhere between car dealers, kitchen equipment suppliers and a shop for outdoor furniture. All easy accessible by car. The bus from the train station, however, runs only once per hour. At peak times.
But the weather was fine, it was warm (at least compared to Greenland), it's only about 3km from the train station and Denmark is a good place for pedestrians.
So I walked to the museum. As a bonus for doing that, I managed to spot a heron near a small lake along the way.
The museum itself turned out to be one of these technology museums that feel more like someone took the stuff stored somewhere in his shed, cleaned it up a bit and called it a museum.
What I mean with that is that the collection seemed a bit random and more based on "stuff someone donated to us", "things we got cheaply" than on any unifying theme.
So there's an old TV transmission van (presumably because Danish Television donated that to the museum at some point) next to a Tesla roadster, which, in turn, is parked next to some Mercedes Limousine that looks like it's from the late 70's.
It's not bad as a museum. It feels strangely comfortable. A bit like at home, where various stuff accumulates, without any overall plan, because it was useful at a time and then never thrown away. Although on a vastly larger scale than the stuff in my cupboard at home. In museums like those, I always suspect that, if I had a few millions of spare money and I would be a lot tidier, I might have storage depot somewhere looking a lot like that. (Realistically, though, given the way I store things, it would look more like this museum in New Zealand.)
Often the most interesting activity in museums of technology is to look at things in their early incarnations, before they have settled in on a common, expected way, how "things are done".
Of course, cars have steering wheels and bicycles have handlebars.
It's something I have never thought about. (Even though I have recently read that there had been early cars that used steering reins, as that was how you steered horses. So it seemed to make sense to steer a car the same way.)
It didn't expect to see a bicycle with a steering wheel.
While. admittedly, this wasn't a case of 'not yet having settled in on a common way of doing things' (by the time the bicycle was built, bicycles with steering handlebars had been around for more than a century), stuff like that makes me wonder whether there what the advantages and disadvantages were of the other approach(es). And whether it had been random fashion, which variant became dominant or whether there was a good reason for that.
For example, a steering wheel on a bicycle seems like a useful feature when going around tight corners. If you have to turn the front wheel almost 90°, gripping the handlebar is uncomfortable. And you need to sit in a strange position on the bicycle. A steering wheel allows you to change your grip and hand position on the wheel, without moving the body much. It would also make it easier to attach things to the steering column, if you don't want to move them around. Like rear view mirrors. In most cases, you don't want the mirror turn with the front wheel (as they do now when attached to the handlebar), but want them in line with the bicycle body. It makes more sense to attach them to the frame of the bike (to the shaft of the steering column) and not to the handle bar. While you could do that today, the handle bar has a wide arc of motion, so the mirrors need to be far to the sides. A steering wheel has a fixed diameter, so the mirrors could be placed a hand-width outside the wheel. And a steering wheel could have a gear between it and the bicycle wheel, so it would be adjustable how much the front wheel turns to the side when someone turns the steering wheel.
Obviously, everything considered, a handlebar makes more sense for steering a bicycle than a wheel. But it's fun to consider it. Which I would never have done without seeing a bicycle with a steering wheel.
Something I found elegant in its simplicity was this early bicycle brake.
It's a leather strap going down from the centre of the handlebar. And when you pull it, it pushes a little metal lip against the back wheel. Much simpler and more stylish than using a lever pulling some wire running through some outer cable housing, which then operates some braking mechanics.
But in this case it is also easy to see why this approach got abandoned. To pull the leather strap, you need to take one hand off the handlebar. This reduces the amount of control you have over the bicycle right at the moment where you need it most (presuming you brake because there's something in the way and not only because you have reached the end of your journey.
Another puzzle, although not so much about the exhibition piece itself, but more about its place in the museum: How did that plane get in there?
The blue steel pillars are holding up the roof. I don't think they were able to simply remove them, push in the plane from the back and put them in again. It also seems unlikely that they removed the roof construction and lowered the plane in from above.
Technically, they could have removed the blue steel pillars and supported the roof with temporary pillars. And move them while the plane was slowly moved in. But I doubt that.
Maybe they already had the plane when they built the hall, put it in place and built the hall around it.
I admit that the most likely method was to push the plane in disassembled and then re-attach the wings and the tail-fin after it was in the hall. But at least it got me thinking about that.
Somewhat scary was this helicopter.
It is designed for emergency medical evacuation.
But if, for example, I had somehow broken my leg while on a remote mountain somewhere, the last thing I would want to do is being strapped to the outside of a helicopter with nothing but a couple of safety belts. (On the other hand, given a plan for something to do this summer, it might not be as bad as it looks.) I would definitely prefer a rescue helicopter that has room for patients inside. (And where someone medically experienced can attend to you and help you. And not simply wave at you from the inside. The arrangement has one advantage, though. With that kind of helicopter, nobody can hear you scream...)
And after this somewhat morbid part, back to something more cheerful: Lego.
After all, this is Denmark, so naturally, Lego products are featured as well.
Before they Lego started making bricks, they used a plastic injection molding machine to make little toy trucks.
Back then, they were still branded with a real company name ("Esso"). It was decades later when Lego invented their own fictional company ("Octan") for use in their products.
The museum also had a few early Lego bricks on display.
While they already looked like 'modern' Lego bricks, they didn't have an 'interior' back then (the little round 'pipes'). As a result, the early bricks didn't really stick to each other.
They were slightly better than wooden building blocks were, as they were lighter and didn't slide of to the side. But you couldn't build anything stable with it. (For some unrelated and complicated reason, I had recently read about the early history of Lego bricks. But I had never seen one of the early ones, as the are now, evidently, rare museum pieces.)
After visiting the museum, I walked back to the train station and went back to Copenhagen proper.
Side remark: Copenhagen public transport is great, but their smart card system ("Rejsekort") for using it is (at least for tourists) idiotic. You 'check in' contactless when you enter a station and 'check out' contactless when you leave. And the fare gets deducted from your card, which you can then top up again. So far, so good. The problem (for a tourist) is that you need to have a minimum amount on the card to be able to use it. I knew that going to the airport costs 36 DKK. And after coming back from Helsingør, I still had about 50 DKK on my card. So all seemed fine to me. But as the system doesn't know where you will be leaving the train, it 'blocks' 70 DKK (about 10 Euro) when you start the trip as 'prepayment'. And if that's not on the card, you can not 'check in'. Even though I had enough money on the card to pay for the ride, the system didn't let me. You need to top up the card. And the lowest amount by which you can do that is 100 DKK. So, in addition to the 50 DKK I had on my card, I needed to add another 100 DKK to it, so I could use up 36 on my way to the airport, forcing me to leave about 114 DKK (about 16 Euro) on the card. Which I am unlikely to ever use. I can see that this is ok for people who live in Denmark, as they will simply top up the card to a higher amount, as they will use it continuously. (And they can also link it to their bank account and top it up automatically.) But if you are unlikely to use the card again, it is annoying that you need to put extra money on it, even if you know that there's enough money on it to cover the journey. (It's even more annoying than this, as there are also 'personal' smart cards (which you probably won't have as a tourist) and they only require a balance of 25 DKK. So I would have been fine with having 50 DKK on the card for a 36 DKK trip. But with the 'anonymous' smart card I got as a tourist, I couldn't do that. (Though this is, probably, not specifically to annoy tourists. With a personal card, it's easier for them to send you a bill if you go somewhere and don't have enough money on the card to pay for the trip. If you are an 'anonymous' user, then their chances of getting the money from you later are slim.) But still. So far, my experience in Scandinavia was that companies trust their customers to do the right thing and behave properly. So forcing people to have more money on their smart card than needed, because they might travel to a more expensive place seems out of place.
To avoid ending this on a sour note, here's something whimsical I spotted when walking around in Copenhagen.
Near a park, not far from the airport, were these running tracks.
So far, so normal.
But then they continued like this.
