The 1940s

In this cabinet, you can see the devices made since the very end of the World War II until the end of the 1940s. The Czechoslovak economy was badly damaged because of the war. Consumer production has been completely halted during the final years of the war. A lot of damage was done during the liberation battles and the escape of the German forces. On the other hand, a large quantity of war production materials was left in Czechoslovakia. Private companies restarted the production of the same types as in the beginning of the 1940s or launched the designs that they have prepared during the war. On the 10th August 1946, the Tesla company was founded by nationalising 16 private factories. Most of them were subsidiaries of foreign companies, only the Mikrofona from Praha-Strašnice and Telegrafia from Pardubice were Czech. The remaining private companies were nationalised in the following years. The new Tesla company continued to make the products of the nationalised companies, but later started to produce its own designs. The Tesla name was chosen to commemorate Nikola Tesla, the genial Serbian inventor. Later, for political reasons, the name was said to be a short of "TEchnika SLAboproudá" ("low-power electrotechnics").