Eli Whitney Museum

William Kidd was a real pirate. He was a Scot who sailed Long Island Sound when New Haven is a still young Colony. Captain Kidd could have visited New Haven's harbor. Myths and legends followed his exploits. One of those got out of control. Captain Kidd may have created the story that pirates bury treasure and reveal the whereabouts with maps on which X marks the spot.

Maps organize thinking. They create intersections for clear choices. They prevent unwanted collisions. They keep paths from getting too crowded.

Electric Circuits also do all those things.

Verne published this account of a mysterious submarine's journeys around the world, just a few years after primitive submarines (H.L.Huntley) entered the American Civil War in a single awkward attack. Verne's advanced Nautilus was powered by electric motors, another veintion still in its infancy. Many engineers who would construct pilots the world's first useful submarines acknowledge Verne's tales inspired their work.

Richard Panchyk's Mapping the World will guide you through this history of map-making from cave painting to carefully contoured modern maps. Draw simple diagrams. Then discover how to add useful layers of information with color, symbols, numbers and illustrations. Learn to measure with a compass. Apply all your skills to construct an artful map from fantasy or your own life.

A German professor finds an original Islandic runic manuscript with a saga of a secret passage to the center of the Earth. Along with his nephew and an Islandic guide, the professor descends through an entrance in an old volcano to discover fantastic geological phenomena, prehistoric monsters and adventures which end when they are ejected through the side vent of a stratovolcano.

You live in a world of remarkable maps on screen. They do things that few science fiction writers predicted in detail. The triumph of digital maps leaves the world mountains of paper maps with no place or purpose. So let's invent some uses for orphan maps.

The Sultan's Elephant is a story about a Sultan, an Elephant, and a time-traveling little girl that inspired a collossal celebration to commemorate Verne's genius in 2006. See: The Sultan's Elephant' by Royal de Luxe on YouTube

Follow the inspiration. Construct an elegant Elephant (not 42 tons, not requiring 22 operators!) a little girl and her time machine/rocket.

Maps help us understand where we are. Some of the very first maps noticed patterns in night skies. Everywhere East and West, North and South, ancient cultures gave names to bright stars and saw pictures that tied them together. The Greek names are familiar: Andromeda, Aquarius, Ares, for example. The Stars predicted season and directions. It's not so surprising that some people believed that the Stars influenced other things.

Make maps that serve to guide marbles on adventures. Make some small maps that are simple dexterity games. Maps often have beginnings, middles and ends (goals, destinations). Games always have beginnings, middles and ends. Then construct a grand map for a magnetic marble. Cut and decorate your paths. Construct visible obstacles (holes, traps, gates). Construct invisible (secret) obstacles (with magnets) that will make your adventure more exciting.

Buckminster Fuller was a writer and designer who lived through much of the 20th Century. He found thoughtful and unusual ways of looking at things. He argued that homes could be spheres. He praised the building wisdom of tents. He asked more questions than almost everyone. He drew and constructed a map and globe that will let you see the world as you might not have considered it.