This series of posts reflects my inner geek.  It chronicles a number of information technology (IT) related “tourist attractions” that I would love to visit before I die.  Some of them are simply far away locations that I dream of making it to and others will be locations that I would need some assistance obtaining access to.  Please feel free to add your own via the comments block below.

Today, I feature The United States Naval Academy (USNA) in Annapolis, Maryland. 

From Wikipedia:

"The United States Naval Academy is an undergraduate college in Annapolis, Maryland, United States, that educates and commissions officers of the United States Navy and Marine Corps. The Academy often is referred to simply as "Annapolis". It is also called "The Academy", "The Boat School", or "Canoe U". Sports media refer to the Academy as Navy; this usage is officially endorsed.

 

The U.S. Naval Academy was established 10 October 1845.

 

The Academy’s motto is Ex Scientia Tridens, which is Latin for "from knowledge, seapower" (the trident, emblem of the Roman god Neptune, represents seapower)."

By now you may be wondering what the geeky information technology connection is to the esteemed service academy…. Well, you may not know that it is where the first serious, groundbreaking work to determine the speed of light occurred!

From USNA’s Math Department’s Official Website:

"In the late 1870′s, a Navy lieutenant and instructor in the Academy’s Department of Physics, Albert Michelson, performed his now-famous experiments to measure the velocity of light.

 

These experiments were fundamental to the eventual development, by Einstein, of the Relativity Theory. In 1907 Michelson, a graduate of the Naval Academy class of 1873, became the first American to be awarded the Nobel Prize. Today, the science wing (dedicated in the spring of 1969) at the Academy is named Michelson Hall.”

 

(Reference from "Annapolis, the United States Naval Academy," by David Pahl, 1987, Exetar Books.)

If you go to the United States Naval Academy to visit, you can actually walk the exact path that Michelson used to measure the speed of light across the Academy’s grounds.  They have the path marked with bronze medallions on the ground and there is a plaque at both ends immortalizing his receipt of the Nobel Prize. If you go to his Wikipedia site, you can see a photo of a portion of the path.

I am sure that you either have a fiber optic connection to the Internet or you lust for one.  I know that billions of IP packets every day cross fiber lines encircling our globe. I know that laser communications have revolutionized data and voice transfer across long distances.  Einstein’s relativity work was also a direct out growth of Michelson’s efforts, bringing with it nuclear medicine, power, and a conceptualization of our physical universe that continues to power innovation.  If you need further creative fuel to think of all the ways in which the measurement of the speed of light was one of the geekiest events of human history, feel free to review this web site dedicated to it.  Trust me if you really stop to think of how much innovation, invention, and transformation was driven by this one man’s obsession to measure the “thought to be immeasurable” you will be awed when you walk his footsteps at USNA where it all came to pass!

Of course, Annapolis, Maryland is also one of the prettiest tourist sites on the Eastern Seaboard and a super place to visit for boating, St. John’s College, sailing, and just plain Revolutionary War nautical history.  It is so beautiful that you may even be able to talk you non-Geek spouse into going for a weekend!  Enjoy!

So where do you want to visit that is related to your interest in The Information Age and Information Technology?  Do you want to see where people worked, like this article, or where objects are?  Together we could make a terrific list.  Please add below.

That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for October 21, 2009 ©Scott Coughlin

Photo credit:  USNA Class of 1957 Website

 

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