Interactive touches—both high- and low-tech—are scattered throughout the museum...Visitors can touch a replica of slave shackles and find out for themselves how heavily a soldier’s backpack weighed him down. Using touch-screen computers, they can learn how to recognize bugle calls, decode signal corps flag messages, and locate battlefield monuments.

The visitor center has been designed to immerse visitors in the Gettysburg story by exposing them to the National Park Service’s extensive collection of war objects, artifacts and archival materials, as well as interactive exhibits and displays that will prepare them to tour the areas where the fighting took place.

The historical galleries next to the theaters are very much in line with the contemporary trend toward media-dense exhibits, filled with shorter films in mini-theaters, all carefully structured to draw the viewer through ‘a narrative’ presentation of the war, its causes and its aftermath.

In another area, visitors can tap computer stations to see whether their ancestors fought here and follow troop movements on a touch screen.