Other, large areas are Blaupunkt car radios and navigation systems, power tools, domestic appliances, thermotechnology, and product areas that no longer exist at Bosch, such as cell phones, radios, Bauer projectors and cameras, medical engineering, television recording and transmission technology and Blaupunkt television sets, home radios, hi-fis and portable radios.

Automotive lighting technology is another area worthy of special mention. Alongside magneto ignition, it is the oldest area of automotive engineering and therefore carries extreme historical significance.

The inventory also includes objects from past product areas. Examples include hydraulic and pneumatic components that represent the history of the area now known as Industrial Technology.
We focus on the Bosch brand in all product areas. These include power tools, thermotechnology and domestic appliances, an area featuring appliances that represent the original Bosch core areas of expertise – dishwashers, washing machines, food processors, refrigerators and freezers. Here, as in other areas, the range of products is rounded off by curious or unusual appliances, e.g. electric toothbrushes, egg boilers or ice-cream-makers.
The collection does not contain any examples for product areas involving the manufacture of customized large-scale equipment and plant, partly for reasons of space. The same is true for packaging systems, which are often manufactured individually, or for large industrial engineering products, such as assembly conveyors for factory production.

There is an additional area known as “Miscellany and curiosities”, which includes unusual products from the early years, semi-finished products (e.g. castings for headlamp casings), upstream products, and products that were vital in the early post-war years (e.g. umbrellas, Spätzle presses and dustpans). Functional models are also available, including around 20 magneto ignition models, some of which are more than 70 years old and were originally presented at exhibitions. One special model is a functioning miniature of the “Bosch-Sonne” (“Bosch sun”) of 1976, a simulation model of space – originally 15 meters high and 30 meters in diameter – that was used to examine the effect of solar radiation on satellites in orbit.

The collection can only ever provide a representative insight into the diversity of Bosch products, as Bosch has produced millions of product variants in the area of automotive technology alone.
To limit the size of the collection, only a few products have been selected for most of the product areas. However, the diversity of some areas is demonstrated by way of example. Take the case of spark plugs. The collection also shows around 1,200 examples of the first automotive product, the magneto ignition, which up to the 1920s was the main source of revenue and the impetus for Bosch’s evolution from workshop to global company, thus illustrating the huge diversity of models that resulted from the individual requirements of customers – the automotive manufacturers – for their various vehicle models.

The latest products represent current innovations across all of today’s Bosch product areas, from the latest diesel injection system to state-of-the-art power tools. In addition to the first magneto ignitions, highlights undoubtedly include the first-generation diesel injection pump (1927), the first refrigerator model (1933) from Bosch and the first generation of power tools manufactured by Bosch (hair trimmer, 1928).