Norsk Hydro arrived in Rjukan in 1907, drawn by the raw energy of the Rjukan waterfall and the Maana river. The company needed enormous quantities of electricity for the Birkeland-Eyde process, which used electric arcs to fix atmospheric nitrogen into fertilizer. Within a few years, the sleepy Telemark valley had been transformed into an industrial center, complete with factories, worker housing, a railway, and a ferry service across Lake Tinnsjo. The Vemork station, designed by architect Olaf Nordhagen in a style that nodded to traditional Norwegian building, channeled the landscape's power into a chemical revolution. When Norsk Hydro abandoned its hydrogen plant in 1971, it left behind the first facility in the world to mass-produce heavy water -- and a building too historically significant to demolish.

Vemork's heavy water production made it a strategic target during World War II. Heavy water was essential for certain approaches to atomic research, and the Nazis wanted every drop Norway could produce. In February 1943, a team of Norwegian commandos who had fled occupied Norway returned by parachute and skied across the Hardangervidda plateau to reach the plant. Operation Gunnerside succeeded in destroying the heavy water production cells, delaying Germany's nuclear research. The museum gives this story particular attention, placing the sabotage within the larger context of Norway's occupation and resistance. Visitors walk through the very spaces the commandos infiltrated, where the industrial architecture becomes a stage for wartime drama.

The museum's foundation was established on November 3, 1983, by an unusual coalition: the municipality, the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate, and several labor unions including the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions. The first curator was hired in 1984. From the beginning, the mission extended beyond Vemork itself. Tinn Museum, a heritage village preserving pre-industrial life, was established the same year. By 2004 it had been integrated into the Industrial Workers Museum, along with a digitized collection of more than 30,000 photographs documenting life in this corner of Telemark. The museum also took over operation of the heritage Rjukanbanen railway in 2007, preserving the industrial transport network that once connected factory to lake to the wider world.

In 2007, the Norwegian Ministry of Culture allocated eight million kroner for the museum's expansion, recognizing its role in a broader effort to earn UNESCO World Heritage status for the Rjukan-Notodden industrial landscape. That status came in 2015. Today the museum anchors the European Route of Industrial Heritage, drawing visitors who come for the sabotage story and stay for something harder to find elsewhere: the tangible evidence of how a remote Norwegian valley became an engine of modern industry. The hydroelectric generators are still visible in the turbine hall. The railway still runs. The valley still channels water downhill with the same indifferent force that drew Norsk Hydro here more than a century ago.