High-tech display of geek history: inside the best personal library in the world

Internet entrepreneur Jay Walker used his fortune to create an elaborate library filled with intellectual achievements spanning human history. This private library is 3,600 square feet filled with landmark and bejeweled books, an early edition of Chaucer, a small earth globe signed by nine astronauts, a 300-million-year old trilobite fossil, the original hand prop from the TV show The Addams Family, a hand-painted “celestial atlas” from 1660, an original copy of The Nuremberg Chronicle from 1493, a working version of a Nazi-era Enigma machine, an original Sputnik 1 satellite hanging from the ceiling, a chandelier from a James Bond film, the napkin that Roosevelt sketched out his plan for victory in 1943, a field tool kit for Civil War surgeons, all encompassed in three levels packed with more rare artifacts than your local history museum. As Wire revealed, you’ll find all of this and more in internet entrepreneur Jay Walker’s unbelievable New England crib. The founder of technology think tank Walker Digital, Jay Walker set out to create a space dedicated to the human imagination.  The result is a functional fantasy land that serves as a shrine to creativity, and inspiration for anyone looking to build their own home library. Walker describes his motivation: 

“I started an R&D lab and have been an entrepreneur. So I have a big affinity for the human imagination,” he says. “About a dozen years ago, my collection got so big that I said, ‘It’s time to build a room, a library, that would be about human imagination.’”

 This TED video of Jay Walker shares the insides of his “Library Of Imagination.” Not only does he have an amazing collection of one-of-a-kind relics, but he presents them in a space that looks like it’s been cooked up by the Disney Imagineers and Willy Wonka. He has objects that span 5000 years of imagination!

The beginning of the video, Jay talks about some of his artifacts… Just past the 3 minute mark, you’ll see images from the Library of Imagination.