Taiwan Industrial Heritage Hall
Permanent exhibition, renewed in recent years
On the sixth floor the museum tells the story that gives it its purpose: how Taiwan went from a farming colony to one of the world's great manufacturing economies in the space of a single lifetime. The hall is arranged in five zones. It opens with Taiwan's industrial pride today, an interactive display about connected devices and smart factories, then moves back in time through the Japanese period and the post war decades, with real machines and documents at every step. Further sections celebrate the economic miracle of the nineteen sixties and seventies, the engineers and entrepreneurs who drove it, and a closing gallery of games that ask what comes next.
The objects are humble and moving. Look for the Japanese era surveying instruments used to map the island for railways and irrigation, a knitting machine from the factory that made the famous Three Guns underwear brand, and a fully automatic sock knitting machine that stands for the moment in the nineteen sixties when farm families sent their children to work in textile plants. A Fuji Champion bicycle from the colonial period once cost more than half a year's wages. A peanut oil press shows the small scale food industry that existed before the nineteen eighties.
The hall is aimed at teenagers and adults and rewards slow reading, so it is a good place to escape the noise of the children's floors. It connects directly to the museum's founding idea, that a science museum in the industrial south should honour the workers and machines of Kaohsiung's own harbour, steelworks and export zones. For older Taiwanese visitors the exhibits are family memories; for foreign visitors they explain how the island you are standing on came to make the world's semiconductors.
Did You Know? The Three Guns knitting machine on display belongs to the same brand of cotton vests and underwear that many Taiwanese families still buy today.
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