The History Center is under renovation, but is available for special events.
Contact us.
Visit SAMSAT AREA 21(r), open daily!
SAMSAT History Center
Our History Museum is located on the Port San Antonio campus near Lackland Air Force Base, a one-minute drive from AREA 21™. See highlights of the SAMSAT collection pending our move into Port San Antonio's Innovation Center.
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Things to see at the History Museum
The capture of an Enigma Coding Machine by the Allies was a major event of WWII. See one of very few remaining.
Datapoint Corporation was a 12,000-employee company in San Antonio with a claim to creating the first personal computer. See the Datapoint collection.
SAMSAT maintains the historical archive for Datapoint Corporation, including computers, other equipment, manuals, and collaterals.
Phototelesis, a spin-off of Datapoint, created a phone that can send and receive pictures. The world's first cameraphone!
Inside a typical phone, there are 350 billion transistors that do the same job as each vacuum tube you see in this picture.
Visit the History Museum
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​FREE (donations welcome)
102 Mabry Drive, San Antonio, Texas, 78226
Paste a map link into your phone's browser:
Google Maps: tinyurl.com/samsat-map-google
Apple Maps: tinyurl.com/samsat-map-apple
The Edison collection includes a light bulb made of horse hair, and a 1900s dynamo (below) for energy distribution.
Learn who Nikola Tesla was, how a Tesla coil works, and why the Tesla coil sends energy through the air that turns on the lights. We'll fire up the coil for you!