Computer/Technology oriented tourist attractions

In Hungary, you can visit the informatics history exhibition with some truly fascinating objects. Did you know the earliest hard case floppy was invented in Hungary in 1973 (!), Wikipedia mentions it too. They have a robot built in 1956-57. It's absolutely fascinating and for us Hungarians really depressing how these never went anywhere due to the Cold War / Iron Curtain.

The address is

Szent-Györgyi Albert Agóra
6722 Szeged, Kálvária sgt. 23 .
Hungary

Szeged is an easy train ride from Budapest.

(I know to some Hungary might not be in the surrounding area of Germany but this is an absolutely unique exhibition. Most of these things you've never heard of and definitely would never ever see anywhere else.)

Google told me about the Bielefelder (or Deutsches) Computermuseum.

http://www.deutsches-computermuseum.de/

... and about the Computermuseum München:

http://www.computermuseum-muenchen.de/

Some other relevant links from the results page:

http://www.deutsches-museum.de/en/exhibitions/communication/computers/ http://www.sdtb.de/Mathematics-and-Computer-Science.1256.0.html

Interestingly, as I typed "deutsches c" the only suggestion was "deutsches currywurst museum". Perhaps the computer museums are less frequently sought than the currywurst museum; I don't know what that might imply about their quality.

Depending on where you are, you may want to try the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM) in Karlsruhe (South-Western Germany) (WP article).

It features various historical computing devices, but it also has a strong arts-related angle, so there are also many "interactive arts exhibits" that use multimedia technologies in one way or another.

Depends a little on what you mean by the "surrounding area", but in Linz, Austria you'll find Ars Electronica Center.

I highly recommend checking out the "Panorama" exhibit, but mainly because several of the images used in it are mine.

At least in South Germany there are a few famous ones:

• Technology museum in Sinsheim: Famous for the only place in the world with the two commercial super sonic passenger jets (Concorde, Tupolev TU-144), a huge formula 1 collection and many more tanks, cars and airplanes
• Technology museum in Speyer (same association behind it as in Sinsheim): Famous for having a 747, an old german navy submarine, a Buran (the Russian version of the space shuttle) and many more exhibits
• The Center for Culture and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe: World famous for modern media based art exhibitions
• The German Museum in Munich: Maybe slightly misnamed it is mainly a technology museum with a lot of interesting pieces and exhibitions