Take a Look at Tech’s Greatest Artifacts From the Samsung Innovation Museum
We visited Samsung’s headquarters in Suwon, South Korea, which houses some seriously cool historical tech in the Samsung Innovation Museum.
I went to South Korea last month, and part of my trip took me to Samsung’s headquarters in Suwon, just south of Seoul. It’s a sprawling campus filled with tall buildings where some of the latest phones, laptops, TVs, and other electronics are developed. Samsung’s headquarters is a small city in itself, with many different facilities including its own shops and restaurants.
While there I took a closer look at Samsung’s giant The Wall microLED TV, and while it’s the biggest television I’ve seen, it wasn’t the most striking experience I had on the trip. That credit goes to the Samsung Innovation Museum, a fascinating museum of technology in the heart of Samsung’s campus.
While the name of the museum makes you think it will be a showcase for Samsung’s products and frame everything in terms of the company, I was surprised to see much more than that. It’s a museum of technology history, with artifacts stretching back over two centuries. Motors, batteries, appliances, TVs, and phones adorn its walls and tables, showing exactly how we got here from there.
I toured the museum, took pictures, and am sharing my favorites here. The biggest hits for me are probably the Leyden Jar battery, the induction motor built by Nikola Tesla, the first television, and (because I’m a huge nerd with a ’90s hacker sense of aesthetics) the Matrix phone.
The Leyden Jar: The First Battery (1740s)
Batteries have come a long way in 250 years. The Leyden Jar was one of the first electrical storage devices, a literal glass jar that uses tinfoil wrapped around the inside and outside to draw in and store electrostatic energy.
Nikola Tesla’s Induction Motor (1888)
It wouldn’t be a technology museum without a mention of Nikola Tesla, but the Samsung Innovation Museum straight-up has one of his creations. Tesla invented an alternating current induction motor, the first of its kind to be stable and efficient enough for commercial use.
The First Electric Washing Machine (1911) and Vacuum Cleaner (1920s)
Maytag and Hoover have been household names for a century, and using electricity for about as long. The first electric washing machine was introduced by Maytag in 1911, and this electric vacuum cleaner was sold in the 1920s. We’ve come a long way since then with the latest crop of robot vacuums.
The First Television (1926)
Long before 8K, 4K, 1080p, or even broadcast networks, the television was a small screen in a big box built by John Logie Baird, a Scottish scientist. This was the first commercially demonstrated TV, shown off in 1926.
Walkie-Talkie: The First Portable Communication (1942)
Military research drove early wireless communication development, with the first two-way radios seeing use in World War II. This is the first Walkie-Talkie (left), a large backpack radio that allowed soldiers to communicate on the battlefield. On the right is Motorola’s Handie-Talkie, one of the first handheld two-way radios.
The First Mass-Produced Vacuum Tube TV (1946)
It would take two decades after John Logie Baird showed off the first TV publicly before it would become a commercial product. This is the first mass-produced vacuum tube TV, released by RCA in 1946.
The First UK-Compatible TV (1951)
A few years after RCA, an English company named Bush released the first TV compatible with signals from across the UK. Differences between signal timing and resolution has plagued TV content across continents, particularly the PAL/NTSC standards that split North America and its 60Hz refresh rate TVs from most of the rest of the world and its 50Hz refresh rate TVs.
Early Portable TVs (1959)
We might watch a lot of TV on our phones now, but decades ago we had to lug around these fairly massive boxes if we wanted to watch TV on the go. Some didn’t even have batteries, and needed to be plugged in at all times.
Suitcase Phone (1970s)
For the executive who wants their own Walkie-Talkie, this early portable phone fit in a briefcase and weighed over 60 pounds.
Excellent TV (1980s)
The 80s had some amazing electronic aesthetics. The TV on the left is Samsung’s “Excellent TV.”
The First MP3-Playing Phone (1999)
Apple gets a lot of credit for driving mobile MP3 technology with the iPod, but the idea of playing music on your phone started in 1999 with the Samsung SPH-M2500 here. Its 32MB of storage could hold up to 10 songs.
The First TV Phone (1999)
The Samsung SCH-M220 was the first cell phone that could show TV. It was released in 1999 just like the SPH-2500, and likely can’t tune into any TV now after the switch to digital.
The First Watch Phone (1999)
You can make calls on your Apple Watch now, but for a long time the watch phone was a Dick Tracy fantasy. Samsung built the first actual watch-phone, which looks just as cyberpunk as the Matrix phone.
Early LCD TVs (2003)
This Samsung LCD TV was the largest one of its kind when it was released in 2003. Now it’s the size of a modest computer monitor.
The Matrix Phone (2003)
Samsung sold only 5,000 of these cell phones after the release of The Matrix. I still want one.
The First High-Resolution Camera Phone (2006)
Nearly every phone has a camera now, but this was the first with an impressive one. The Samsung SCH-B600 is considered the first high-resolution camera phone, with a 10MP sensor. Megapixel counts haven’t gone up much since 2006, but sensors, optics, and processing technology have all gotten much better.
Early BlackBerry (2000) and the First Samsung Galaxy Phone (2010)
Samsung’s phone legacy starts here, next to one of the pioneering forces of smartphones. On the left is one of the first BlackBerry phones. On the right is the Samsung Galaxy S, the first in a decade-old line of constantly upgrading flagship smartphones.
Originally published at https://www.pcmag.com on December 11, 2019.
