Photos by Chong Yap
It's nostalgia and wonder time -- visit the National Museum for free during the long National Day weekend Aug 7 - 10 and view “50 Made in Singapore Products" such as Trek 2000's Thumbdrive®, Creative Technology's Soundblaster card and Setron TV sets.
In the exhibition, which runs till Sept 6, the 50 products are categorised into six major groups: Electronics, Fashion, Food & Beverages, Medicine, Household and Transport.
The following is the write-up accompanying the Thumdrive® exhibit:
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 Poster for ThumbDrive from year 2000.Trek 2000 International Ltd was founded by Henn Tan who bought over a small electronics trading company called Trek in 1995.
In 1999, Mr Tan and his team of engineers began work on a device capable of storing and transferring large amounts of data utilising the Universal Serial Bus (USB) interface. The main challenge was to overcome the data size limitation of the floppy disk and create a device small enough for consumers to carry around.
 Henn Tan, CEO of Trek. NextInsight file photo.In 2000, Trek 2000 successfully launched the Thumbdrive® at CeBIT, an international trade fair. However, this success led to a proliferation of identical mass storage devices and the company had to deal with infringements to the intellectual property rights associated with the Thumbdrive® and its associated USB mass storage technology while it waited for its patents to be approved.
 In 2002, the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore approved the patents of Trek 2000’s Thumbdrive® and its associated USB mass storage technology. Since then, Trek 2000 has been going after local copycat manufacturers with success. In 2007, Trek 2000 launched a campaign to trademark the word “Thumbdrive” and won it three years later on 30 November 2010 after three appeals. Today, Trek 2000 has a library of more than 600 patents associated USB mass storage technology.
From a small, five-man outfit, Trek 2000 is now a global company with offices in numerous countries, including the United States, Japan, India and China, and counts companies like SanDisk, Toshiba and Imation as its major partners and clients.
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