Dear Pilot,
I’m learning about a new exhibit every letter now too, now that I have a reason to ask about what’s inside!
For instance, when my guides read your last letter to me, they explained that babies don’t look very cute before they’re born. The ones in the exhibit aren’t done yet so they look gross, but children sometimes enjoy when things are gross so the babies are still quite popular despite that! It seems they’ve also recently become controversial though so it’s another reason not to have a postcard of them. I don’t really understand why exactly, but I was controversial when I was new too so I’m sure it’ll blow over in forty years or so!
There’s too many exhibits at the MSI to count, especially since many of them aren’t permanent and get switched out for new things. Even with such a big building, the museum doesn’t have room to keep everything it displays forever. Having new exhibits coming in all the time gives people a reason to come back so it’s good that they swap things out.
It’s funny you mention that your museum used to be called something different. Mine did as well! Our building was first built for the World’s Columbian Exposition, the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. It was called the Palace of the Fine Arts then and they showed art from all over the world in it. Because we had that big famous fire twenty years before, the other countries sending art would only do it if the building was fireproof. All the other buildings for the Fair were not built so sturdily so when it was over, the rest of the White City got torn down or fell apart… all except our building! (999 was also built to show at the Columbian Exposition and is just as resilient!)
The museum went through more name changes before they found one they liked. There was a lot of back and forth over whether it should be named for the man who donated the money to found the museum. His name was Julius Rosenwald and everyone wanted to call it the Rosenwald Industrial Museum in honor of his civic contributions, but he insisted that the museum shouldn’t have a donor’s name on it. If it wasn’t named after him, then it would belong to the people of Chicago and he thought that was right since the people pay taxes to support us. He wanted instead to name it the Museum of Science and Industry and everyone eventually came around to his way of thinking.
When they finally settled on the name though, people didn’t quite understand how a museum could display industry. They even wrote letters to the newspaper about it. They must get it now since that’s the name that stuck. Your museum only needed two tries to get it right, but I’m glad they changed it to be broader. We wouldn’t have got to be pen pals if they only wanted your IR 65 and cars like her. But then, if you go to the trouble of founding a whole museum for one car, you have to find other things to display with her. You can’t have a museum with just one exhibit; everyone would only visit the once!
It sounds like we here in our yard are lucky that we don’t need fuel or coal anymore. The visitors can take the train and then walk to the museum to save gas, although it is a bit of a trek from the station. Our lawns are quite vast. We’re still getting plenty of visitors though. It helps that we don’t charge admission except for certain things. U-505 is making money on his tours. There’s a coal mine under the museum that costs extra to see too. I thought to ask if maybe we could send your steam engines coal since we have the mine, but my guides say it’s not meant to actually produce coal, it just shows visitors how it would be done. That’s how you display industry.
While we’re on the subject of counting chickens before they hatch though, you can do that here too. There’s an exhibit inside where you can watch baby chickens hatch from eggs right in front of you. Chicks are also kind of gross when they’ve hatched, but they get cuter real quick like babies do once they’re born. New chicks hatch here every day so keeping count of them after a few days would be difficult.
We cannot send your museum coal from our mine, but we have plenty of safely hatched chickens to count on your return to working order.
Your friend,
Pioneer