Landmark emancipation of technical intelligence in pre-World War II Czechoslovakia

Abstract

This paper describes the development, activities, and both the scientific and social contributions of the Masaryk Academy of Labour, Czechoslovakia’s first technically oriented scientific institute and a major centre of the science at that time. It marked the first time an institution devoted to science and engineering had ever been established in the territory of what would eventually become the Czech Republic. Coming on the heels of Czechoslovakia’s independence at the end of the First World War, it succeeded the pre-war Royal Bohemian Society of Sciences and was integrated with the Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts and the newly established Czechoslovak National Council as the youngest of the Czech scientific institutions. In 1952, it was merged with other institutions to formthe Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, the predecessor of today’s Czech Academy of Sciences. The significance of the Masaryk Academy of Labour lay mainly in its targeted, practical application of science and engineering.