Gowstuff

Just got back from visiting my sibs in the Bay Area. On Saturday, I dragged them to see the Pampanito, a restored WWII submarine that is docked at San Francisco's Maritime Park as a floating museum.

I was expecting it to be interesting, but I wasn't expecting it to be so awesomely interesting.

Being inside a sub is like being in the guts of some huge machine. Everything is exposed, and everything is mechanical. Sure, there's electric lights and motors, but no electronics as we are used to today. Even the computer used to compute the torpedo launch trajectories is mechanical.

The entire space is not just cramped--room for humans is almost an afterthought. Comfort couldn't be a priority when they were building this thing. And yet, 80 men or more would spend weeks inside.

You can go for the craftsmanship and the ingenuity that went into building this machine, or you can go to say thanks for the men who could live, work, and fight in such cramped, dangerous quarters. But go, and see the one of the final expressions of a lost era in technology.