What's going on at SPARK?
Here is a 2025 New Year’s resolution even you can make, and luckily, it has never been easier to keep. This year, take a vow to get more music into your life. “Life without music would be a mistake,” Nietzsche famously proclaimed, and we could not agree more. Relaxing, motivating, immersive, life-affirming, these are just some of the many positive …
It’s December and time to gear up for the inevitable. You know, time for holiday cards and Christmas carols, gaudy sweaters and 10-piece sets of nonstick cookware. Time for that undeniable holiday rush that is almost impossible to avoid—and it shows up earlier and faster, every year. Like a tsunami, it can wipe you out. Even for the many folks …
If you’ve ever had trouble completing a call due to a weak signal, or sudden drop in your cell phone connection, then you know how time-consuming and frustrating that experience can be. Today we live in a world offering instant global communication, yet, we sometimes experience network and power outages that disrupt and delay our conversations, making them unnecessarily drawn-out, …
By The Good Time Girls Over 170 years ago, a new religion called Spiritualism offered people the chance to communicate with the dead. Great minds of the time flocked to séances hoping for a shred of proof. More often than not, they found fraudulent mediums and psychics preying on a grieving public for financial gain. People were divided on whether …
Changing a lightbulb is considered one of the easiest do-it-yourself tasks anyone can perform in their home. A job so simple, so user-friendly, there are even bad jokes about people and groups screwing-it up. Here are a few examples of this timeless, sophisticated humor: Question: How many therapists does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: One, but the …
Today, billions of people from all over the world enjoy listening to recorded music. People almost everywhere have access to a mind-boggling variety of recorded sound—instantaneously delivered via computer or cell phone, right in our hands, our ears, our heads. With tons of music right at our fingertips, it’s easy to make music a welcome part of our everyday life—a …
If you lived in this country, just over one hundred years ago, and you wanted musical entertainment in your home, you were pretty much screwed. Unless you could master a musical instrument, your options were severely limited: You could crank-up a music box, or pump-up a player piano, or wind-up a gramophone—or, if you lived in the greater Pittsburgh area, …
Today, the Spark Museum is enjoyed by thousands of visitors of all ages, from all walks of life, from all over the world—and we’ve learned they all want the same thing. Everyone wants to have a fun experience with science. At SPARK, we think that is a great place to start. Our goal has always been to get everyone excited …
From the very beginning, the Museum’s founders wanted to create a major attraction, something that would draw people from all over the world. “We always dreamed of having a signature demonstration, something people couldn’t experience anywhere else,” says John Jenkins, president, CEO & co-founder. “Something grand and dramatic, like the Eiffel Tower, or Old Faithful—just indoors.” On September 13, 2012, …
Of all the classic radios, record players and music boxes displayed in our beloved museum, nothing seems to delight folks quite like the sight and sound of our 1936, WURLITZER Simplex Multi-Selector coin-operated phonograph—more commonly known as, a jukebox. This mechanical marvel invites guests to smile, sway, even swing to the sounds of Tony Bennett, Frankie Lane, and other classic …
