Electrical engineering has been represented in the museum from its very beginning. It quickly managed to obtain its first major donators, including the joint-stock company Electrical Engineering (formerly known as Kolben and Co.), Prague City Electrical Enterprises, the Electrical Engineering Plant of František Křižík in Karlín and others.
Due to the growing range of electrical engineering, it was already at that time impossible to acquire complete developmental series of products in all fields. The Electrical Engineering Department was therefore divided in 1915 into several sections: low voltage, high voltage, telegraphy and telephony.
In 1917 the separate department “Development of Electric Lighting” was established. Miloslav Prokop was very active in this area. Under his leadership, the department focused on expanding the collection and building an exhibit of light sources and lighting. Upon its opening in 1928, this exhibit was highly esteemed by experts at that time and one of the major public attractions. The collection of light sources was the first systematically prepared collection of the museum’s electrical engineering field and still constitutes a significant part of it as the “Prokop Collection”.
In the latter half of the 1920s and in the 1930s, the department continued to expand its collections of measuring and communications technology. The acquisition of a collection of electricity meters from Prague City Electrical Enterprises was a major step in this direction. A separate radio exhibit department was opened at Schwarzenberg Palace in Hradčany.
In 1951 the museum was nationalised. The radio and television exhibit was created in 1955 on the first floor of the building on Letná Plain. Over the decades to follow, this department organized a number of exhibits both at home and abroad. At the end of the 1980s, the soundscape exhibit was created and a separate acoustics department was set up. In 1999 the Development of Telecommunications Technology exhibit was opened and ended with the renovation work on the building in 2004. Today both departments are merged under the Electrical Engineering, Informatics and Acoustics Department.
Acoustics Department
