Subtitle: The Kroch Library at Cornell (turns out it's pronounced "krock" and not "crotch") has exhibits from the Walker Library of The History of Human Imagination.  Which is to say some rich guy's private collection of cool stuff.  I wentt there with a friend and saw stuff including a Sputnik satellite.  We also got a tour of an archivist's selections from Cornell's Rare and Manuscript Collection (including a copy of The Gettysburg address and a page from a Guttenburg bible, but I didn't take any photos there--I assumed they're not permitted).
00-DSC_2937: The Collection (a touring exhibit)
DSC_2891: A Sputnik!  Not <i>the</i> Sputnik that actually orbited the earth, but one of the 7 that were made at that time.
DSC_2892-2: More Sputnik!
DSC_2894: You can see my reflection in the Sputnik.
DSC_2896: Sputnik and Shoshe.
DSC_2898: Sputnik and Frank: First Contact.
DSC_2899: Frank wonders if the defensive shields around the Sputnik are still active.
DSC_2904: Shoshe balances the Sputnik on her finger (sort of).
DSC_2907: A WWII German Engima encryption device.
DSC_2908: The description of the Enigma.
DSC_2909: A facimile of a punchcard from the Jacquard loom.
DSC_2910: The Canterbury Tales, very ornately illustrated, printed in 1896.
DSC_2911: The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1930 printing).
DSC_2912: The Codex Seraphinianus...a modern puzzle.  Perhaps post-modern.
DSC_2914: Description of the Vanguard satellite, the US' answer to the Sputnik (which failed to launch successfully).
DSC_2916: The Vanguard satellite, an amalgamation of pieces from different ones, including some from the one that blew up on launch.
DSC_2918: Shoshe and the Vanguard.
DSC_2924: Gigantic Shoshe holds puny satellite.
DSC_2926: More fun with perspective.
DSC_2927: A cuneiform cone from 2000 BC and an IBM punchcard from roughly 4000 years later.  Both store information.  One that's held up for quite a long time.
DSC_2930: My original thought was, &quot;what the hell is this, some sort of 'Eye of Sauron'?&quot;  The answer is: yes.  I like how it looks like my hand, in the reflection, is holding the Eye (rather than the camera).
DSC_2931: The Eye in context.
DSC_2933: Cinnamon topped coffee cake?  No!  A clutch of fossilized dinosaur eggs.
DSC_2935: A Martian Chassignite Meteorite and its description.
DSC_2936: Shoshe, a planetary geologist who studies Mars, explains to me that that meteorite did indeed come from Mars.  Analyses of the gasses trapped in some of the glass of the meteorites match that observed by the Viking landers.