VEF History Museum

The VEF History Museum was founded in 1969, in commemoration of the VEF Factory’s 50th anniversary. Its collection tallies about 6000 items, documents, photographs and other objects of cultural and historical evidence, which tell the tale of the VEF Factory’s advancement – from a small workshop with a few workers to a tremendous enterprise with numerous branch facilities.

The Museum’s exposition invites visitors for an interactive adventure trip into the history of VEF – to discover how it feels when you call someone by spinning a rotary dial of take a picture with the VEF Minox camera, to hear the unique sounding of radio broadcasts from the 1930s, the 1960s and the 1970s, to take a virtual tour across the historical territory of VEF and see many other remarkable sites and places.

At all times, VEF used to prioritise people – the persons creating its products and making its history – as its core value. The Museum’s collection now stores the memoirs of Aleksandrs Tīpainis, the founder of VEF; aircraft designer Kārlis Irbītis, advertisement artist Zelma Baboliņa, the factory’s ex-Director Aleksandrs Egle and many other executives and employees of VEF.  

The exposition features telephone sets and radio receivers once awarded at international fairs, as well as a most diverse variety of items dating back to the 1930s – electric bulbs, a vacuum cleaner, pocket lights and batteries, a wind generator and many, many other products of the VEF Factory up to the 1980s, best described by the contemporary saying: “VEF produced everything, from needles to aeroplanes.”

More information about the VEF History Museum here.