The Geek Atlas: terrific tech shrines that every geek should see

So Many Places, So Little Time

I seldom own a book that makes my fellow geeks here at PC World go wild when I show it to them, but John Graham-Cumming has done the trick with "The Geek Atlas: 128 Places Where Science and Technology Come Alive," available in both dead-tree and digital formats.

After getting permission from O'Reilly, his publisher, to feature the book in a slide show on PCWorld.com, I passed "The Geek Atlas" around the office, soliciting advice on which locations to feature. I had room for 10 to 12 choices. I got back yellow stickies on more than 50 described in the book.

In this slide show, I've concentrated on technology centers, which didn't give me room to discuss such fascinating places as the Sound Mirrors of Dungeness, England; The Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, Germany; or The Escher Museum of The Hague, Netherlands--among many other places described that have more of a science or art bent to them.

Here's just a sampling of the contents of this clever book, which not only gives you a description, photo, and Web site URL for each location but also supplies the longitude and latitude so that you can pinpoint exactly where in the world each place sits.

Let's start with the World War II code breakers of the United Kingdom.

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