Even though a separate collection department of the history of transportation wasn’t established in the National Technical Museum until 1960, the museum’s collection and presentational activities in this field dates much further back. Club volunteers were the first to provide for specialised activities. Shortly after the opening of the museum in 1910 at Schwarzenberg Palace in Hradčany, these volunteers made the first transportation-themed exhibit accessible to the public. The renaissance palace did not, however, allow for the display of larger-sized objects such as automobiles, airplanes or locomotives.

František Štýdl played a large role in the present-day form of the museum’s transportation collection, curating the collection from the late 1930s till 1962 – first on a voluntary basis and from 1949 as a museum employee. For years his work was linked to the exceptionally high quality of collection activities, as well as to the creation of the large transportation exhibit in the new museum building on Letná Plain. This was open to the public in 1950 and since then has been one of the museum’s largest attractions.

After the railway collection became an independent discipline in 2000, the remaining transportation exhibit objects have been overseen by three specialists – collection curators – who manage the objects, documenting the development of motorised and non-motorised road transportation, aviation, ship transport and fire-brigade technology.

In February of 2012, transformation of the former department known as history of transportation into the Museum of Transportation created an independent division with the National Technical Museum. This new division is further divided into departments dealing with road, water and aerial transportation. Among its functions is responsibility for the Transportation exposition, spatially the largest exposition in the National Technical Museum.