Toyota Commemorative Musuem of Technology

 

Since Nagoya is rich with cool museums, and this Saturday was rainy, James and I decided to go take a look at The Toyota Commemorative Museum of Technology.  The Museum is divided overall into two segments, exploring the history of the original Toyota Automated Loom Corporation, and its eventual subsidiary companies after it diversified its industries into Car Manufacturing, Electronic.

There are over ten companies in the Toyota Group, And only one or two of them have anything to do with cars. This is standard accoording to the "Zaibatsu" system, around which many Major Japanese corporations (All Japanese Corporations?) are arranged. In this system many large companies from diverse sectors provide mutual support to the group members. These companies are usually descended from a parent Corporation (e.g. Mitsubishi) or have been acquired by a larger group.

The point is, Toyota does a lot more than cars, and because of its early history as a loom builder, and then automobile manufacturer, it produces everything from textiles, to modern automated looms, to of course, cars. This allows the group to be very independent of other manufacturers. For example, Aichi Steel Corporation, originaly Toyota Steel Works, a subsidiary of  Toyoda Automatic Loom Manufacturer, likely produces the steel used in many Toyota cars manufactured in Japan. Toyota also produces the textiles it later uses in its seat belts under the name of a separate company in the Toyota group, which was in fact the original parent company of the Toyota group.

Anyways the result of all this history lesson in Toyota's history, is that the museum they have set up is an awesome showcase of the history of both weaving technology and automobile manufacturing in Japan

  

To begin, here is one of the older automated looms on display in the museum. Many of the looms actually work, and the employees demonstrate them every few minutes. This particular model was based on a french design, powered by a waterwheel. The interesting thing about toyota, and likely many Japanese corporations, is how they took the models of cars and looms made in Europe, used them to start up their own companies, and then improved upon them in the decades after, to become world leaders in the same technology. 

Its a promising story of how much any people or nation can achieve from humble beginnings, if given the chance.

  But enough wishy-washy philosophy! God knows America's not going give any mostly rural countries the chance to do that again! Better to just bomb them and take their resources and be done with it!

On to Robots! TRUMPET PLAYING ROBOTS! This guy here isn't the actual model you might have seen on the news or in documentaries. But it is a prototype of the one that actually walks around and plays the trumpet- With its lips!

 The musuem is amazingly demostrative, all of the looms they have, including the older ones are fully operational, and they demonstrate them regularly. This is a demonstration of the forging process used to produce car parts.

 Moving on to the car part of the museum!

The Museum has a large pavilion where you can see display models of Some of Toyota's most iconic cars through its history. Two of my favorites were the original American inspired Toyota Passenger car, and the first Corolla, with all its late fifties classiness.

The Majority of this part of the museum, however, is dedicated to displaying the manufacturing processes that Toyota used when first making its cars in the 1930's up until modern processes which ar heavily automated. There are simulations of robotic part fitting, forging, and machining. And when I say simulations, I mean that the actual machines are there working in front of you, they just don't produce anything!

Here is the rig used to automatically assemble and weld the frame of one passenger car.

James standing under a 120 tonne forging press from chicago Or maybe it was a 6500 tonne press. In any case it was about four stories of practically solid steel.

It wouldn't be a good museum dedicated to a currently operating company if there wasn't sometime of modern marketing included on the display floor. A sudden departure from the rest of the collection of cars on display, whose models seem to span up until the late 80's, there was a display of a a cut away Plug in Hybrid Prius.

 

As we were leaving the museum at closing time and the rain was coming down, we checked out one last piece on display. A large steam powered wheel, which would have run the looms when the factory was first being built. A nice way to end the trip through the museum, which does a really good job of presenting the history of the Toyota company, through interactive and authentic displays of the company's machines in technology.

Aside from the fun of seeing so many industrial machines in action, the museum is an inspiring reminder of the things humans can accomplish.  Automated Looms were some of the first automated technology humanity ever produced. To see the progression in a few hundred years of those at once simple and fascinatingly complex steam powered machines to their modern equivalents, is an inspiring reminder of what humans are capable of. As much as we lament on the human condition, and the dire situation we find ourselves in, it is impossible to forget, when confronted with the brief history of our technological advancement, the genius of which we are capable. Men throughout history have dreamed up ways to make our lives easier and more comfortable, life less full of hardship. And they have succeeded again and again. Thinking about this inspires me not to look back on our terrible mistakes,  but to look to the future with the hope that there are clever people who will wholeheartedly work towards the resolution of our problems.