Museu de la Tècnica de l’Empordà

17600 Figueres, Spain (Katalonien)

There was once a period that changed our way of life. During that time, scientific and technical progress brought about the industrial revolution. A careful visit to the Technology Museum of l'Empordà is a reencounter with this period.  
The automobile, the four-stroke engine, the petrol engine, the gramophone, the telephone and the camera are inventions that cover the 19th century as a whole. Although typewriters and sewing machines first appeared in the 18th century, their main evolution took place in the 19th.

The museum's ground floor takes us back to the earlier period of these inventions and to the initial stages of their development. The petrol engine, which was invented by Daimler/Maybach, or the four-stroke engine, invented by Otto in 1876, are undoubtedly 19th-century inventions.

The Technology Museum of l'Empordà also exhibits a gem from the automobile world: a Hispano Suiza from the beginning of the 20th century.

A few steps away from the Hispano, on the ground floor, a few Morez Comptoise clocks are exhibited as an introduction to what is to come; their simple, slow mechanisms measure our complex, hurried time.

Telephone exchanges, a slide camera, the precursor to the cinema camera, together with a photographic camera.
Small utensils to make everyday life easier. A razor strop, gramophones, radio receivers… and an endless array of objects that relate the transition from the dominion of mechanics to the initial stammerings of information and knowledge technology.

On a false landing, on the way to the first floor, a transparent glass reveals a collection of wonderful heaters. Works of art for firelight storytelling.

Between each floor and on the stair landings, posters advertising travel to places that were considered distant and exotic at the time. Logos belonging to machinery brand names or a framed version of draconian working regulations.

On the first floor, eyes are lost to the entire room: in the middle, sewing machines on their stands A wall decorated with Morez Comptoise clocks and walls covered with photographs that complete the testimony to the work that was carried out in those modern times. Two adjoining rooms exhibit the sewing machines that have hardly been used, machines which expressed the purchasing power of their owners.

The sewing machine could well be the icon of the metamorphosis of our towns and cities. The humble sewing machines enabled the growth of the textile industry and were the gateway for women into the working world. At home, they were a source of extra income and were used to make the family's clothes.

These machines were the embodiment of how art and science, technology and engineering came together to put human creativity to a practical need.

The second floor in the museum is dedicated to the typewriter and to its evolution. To the pieces of furniture on which the typewriters stood, to the desks where would-be typists practised to reach an incredible number of words per minute.

Large, standardised typewriters. Small, portable typewriters that were taken to the trenches by journalists and writers alike. Decoding machines. Machines that made it possible for the blind to write down their thoughts and learn to read.

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