BackInside the Samsung Innovation Museum
Tracing the journey of innovation and technology at the five-storied museum in Suwon, South Korea
PremiumFrom Leyden jars to the first ever Bluetooth and SMS-enabled smartphones, and portable transistor TVs from the 1960s to massive TV screens that use QLED technology—where could you possibly find all these items together at one place?
At the Samsung Innovation Museum in Suwon, South Korea, these and many other items are exhibited across five floors dedicated to the history and evolution of technology and innovation. The museum, which opened in 2014, showcases products not just from Samsung, but from other companies as well: for instance, a portable transistor TV (from 1960) and a micro transistor TV (1962) developed by Sony and phones from IBM, among others.
The museum tour is divided into three parts: seeds of innovation, era of innovation and inspiring innovation. The tour begins with the discovery of electricity (hence the Leyden jars, which were used to store electricity by German physicist Ewald Georg von Kleist in 1745) and goes further into the history of telecommunications and radio. Every floor in the glass-walled building has a different theme: the third floor, for instance, houses exhibits that look at semi-conductors, display and mobile technology. A lot of the exhibits sit behind see-through displays while timelines explaining the development of different technologies adorn the museum walls.
Interactive touch-screen panels and other audio-visual elements bring the museum to life. In the semiconductors section stand two globe-like structures that hold numerous chips suspended in the air. Touch one of them, it breaks away from the group and the globe shows which Samsung products have used that particular chip.
Take, for instance, the world’s first smartphone: the Simon Personal Communicator, a hand-held, touch-screen personal digital assistant that was launched by IBM in 1992-93. To find such a device in this era of futuristic phones has been possible only because several items in the museum have been donated by people from around the world.
The ground floor houses a separate section detailing the history of the South Korean company. It traces the company’s journey from a grocery trading store in 1938 to one of the world’s biggest technology conglomerates. This floor also showcases some of the earliest Samsung Electronics products—the electronics division was started in 1969. The museum is open from Monday to Saturday and admission is free of charge.
For details, visit Samsunginnovationmuseum.com.
The author was in Seoul at the invitation of Samsung.
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