prof. PhDr. Marcela Efmertová, CSc.

Knowledge and technology transfer should be perceived as an integral component of practical research (present-day one included). That is why the possibilities of knowledge transfer from the advanced countries, noted for their major scientific and technological potentials, to the Czech society should be studied. Serving this particular purpose is planned research and analysis of the interlinks connecting scientific, technical and educational institutions in the individual countries concerned, as well as their results scored in science and technology. It is vital to analyze the basic knowledge relating to the need and transfer of scientific and technical findings and their subsequent efficiency; this is known to be affected by many factors, including their practical application. Students will also be asked to examine the individual stages of such knowledge transfer, which, for instance in the 1990s, had been reduced following the division of Czechoslovakia and the subsequent abolition of state-owned and state-run organizations specializing in the transfer. As a result, the state lost institutional and specialist support in evaluating different projects. Another factor to be clarified is the expectation, both of the society as a whole and of a specific research organization or a research team. Proceeding from a geopolitical vantage point, three historically most successful countries in science and technology, namely Britain, France and the United States, have been selected.

The purpose of this subject´s analyses is not only to describe the specialist and ideological profile of scientific and technical elites (these comprise those individuals who succeed in joining and establishing themselves in a given elite, initially without any ethical evaluation), as seen against the backdrop of contemporary social developments, but also to evaluate the key positions and public activities of the leading lights of those elites in the individual branches of science and technology of their times. Key accent is given to the perception of the subject area issues not only on the Czech but also – by way of comparison – on the European science and technology scene. Research will be performed in the context of the period Czech and European (worldwide) science and technology landscape. Another research goal will be to analyze the knowledge society, evolving impact of experts, scientists and technicians on the society of the day, priority given to scientific and technical knowledge, utilization of planned technological growth, genesis of intellectual technology etc. The subject will also highlight the key scientific and technical personalities, accentuating their physical, moral and intellectual differences, their different paths to their specialization and their high qualifications, their influence on the process of shaping scientific and technical societies and on education in general, but also on the society of the day. Attention will also be focused on their personality development and their links to the period bureaucracy. Evolution of elites provides for constant change, circulation of ideas, securing continual reproduction of the structures of the period society.

Persecution, detention, imprisonment and emigration, such was the fate meted out to many scientists, technicians, experts and professional people in this country, following several radical historical turning points in the Czech lands. This subject is devoted primarily to the exile of intellectual, scientific and technical (eventually business) personalities from the Czech lands and later from Czechoslovakia in the years 1848/1938/1948–1989. After the communist coup in 1948, the attitude of the ruling regime to scientists and technicians duly reflected the hostility of the communist ideology towards intellectuals in general. A devoted Stakhanovite laborer was definitely a hero for the society, while an expert or researcher was not. That was also why scientists and technicians were dismissed by the communist establishment, especially in the 1970s, as a particularly untrustworthy section of society; they were branded as being hostile to the normalization regime and critical of it. Students will be asked to focus on the actual circumstances of the emigration of these scholars and experts, on their personal and primarily work experience in the science and technology research in Czechoslovakia and later abroad, on their professional contacts with leading world personalities in science and technology, and on other circumstances of their scientific work or eventual transfer of their scientific and technological expertise back to their native country and also from home abroad.

Research in this course will be devoted to examining a selected technical branch in the years 1945-1968 (1989), highlighting its impact on the industrial sector and on the society of the day. Such a selected technical branch will be explored in terms of its development patterns and its application of tools, materials and processes in a bid to resolve issues arising from human actions; accent will also be placed on evaluating and utilizing the results of scientific research for the overall benefits of mankind and for the process of generating wealth for society, developments that are known to promote mankind´s material wealth and advance its culture. The course will also examine the technical branch under scrutiny to find out whether technology has been evolving proportionately with the developments of mankind and with the degree of scientific learning. In its history, each selected branch has passed through several levels, defined by the progress (actual state) of learning, improvement of its means of production, of its manufacturing procedures and its labor efficiency.

This subject will be devoted to analyzing a selected technical branch until the year 1945, its impact on the industrial sector and on the period society. Technology (derived from the Greek word techné – craft, art) is part of the human culture, an innovative activity encompassing generation of knowledge and processes crucial for devising problem-solving systems and enhancing human skills. Technology also refers to innovation, change or modification of the existing natural environment for the purpose of satisfying conscious human needs and aspirations. The subject covers the period of protoindustrialization and industrialization in the Czech lands, as compared with the development trends in the technical branches in Europe and the world at large.

This subject area traces the development and structure of the individual technical and scientific societies from the start of the industrial era (18th to 21st centuries). Research is aimed at clarifying the process of preparing for and practically constituting such societies, their links and interaction with the educational system, with praxis, plus transfer of technical and scientific knowledge. An integral component of the subject is formed by biograms of distinguished personalities (inventors, technicians, scholars) and the degree of their appreciation by the period society. The subject is also focused on the actual organization and structure of the technical and scientific societies, their tasks in research, their international cooperation etc.

The subject focuses on the development of technical education in a selected field and period; this will be supplemented by comparisons with developments in a suitably selected EU country/countries. The main aim of the study is to describe and analyze noteworthy development trends in the education of technicians in the Czech lands, eventually in Czechoslovakia, and lately in the Czech Republic, and to compare them with the development trends in other European countries that have undergone similar or different historical changes. Common features will be sought, differences will be justified and mutual influence, knowledge transfer, etc. will be revealed. An evaluation of developments in broader historical, political, economic and social contexts is expected.

It its research this subject sets its sights on the evolution of transportation, communication and on the history of business activities in these branches in the Czech lands and in Czechoslovakia in the 19th and 20th centuries, including general civilizational issues connected with the introduction of modern science and new technologies in those branches (e.g. introduction of universal time).

This subject has been conceived as a starting point and a comparative tool vital for understanding the impact of science and technology on the Czech and European society in the era from the 17th to the 21st century. It is aimed at clarifying the role of historiography of science and technology in the individual stages of societal developments, primarily from the scientific revolution in the 17th century to the industrialization and the First and Second Industrial Revolution (Technical-Scientific Revolution) down to the current scientific-technological, information and communications revolution. Interconnections between science, technology, society and culture in the framework of European and Czech developments will also be outlined.

In its research this subject will trace how Czech/Czechoslovak electrical engineering companies/firms evolved and asserted themselves in the period from the 19th to the 21st century (up to the present). It will focus on the early days of business activities in the electrical engineering fields, stemming from family companies and from foreign capital invested in the Czech lands. Accent will also be given to the personalities of the electrical engineering branches and their commercial activities, complete with the way Czech businessmen succeeded (or failed) abroad (e.g. following waves of emigration). Students will also be asked to explore the implementation and results of electrification in Czechoslovakia, provided by electrical engineering companies, also surveying business activities in such contemporary branches, as, for example, computer technology, robotics, artificial intelligence, informatics etc.

Major industrial firms, which included engineering plants, originated in the Czech Lands in the early 19th century. The first industries were dominated by glass and textile manufactures, but new factories equipped with steam engines emerged in the 1830s. In Bohemia, textile factories concentrated in the regions of Liberec, Jablonec, Česká Lípa and Prague, in Moravia in Brno and its vicinity. The largest engineering companies were based in Prague and Brno. The study of their development is an inseparable part of the history of engineering and economy.

Research in this subject area will be focused on the methods of scientific communication, specialist and scientific procedures and their application to specific cases in the history of sciences and technology and in the related field of economic and social history. Analysis will proceed from comparisons of the actual approach to these issues in the Czech milieu and within the EU (and in the world). Scholarly research will be focused on shaping new trends – methodological goals of scientific work (with an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary outreach) and on formulating working hypotheses, complete with their verification and articulation of a well-defined scientific assignment in the history of sciences and technology and in economic and social history. Accent will also be placed on methodology and methods of editorial work in the realm of history of sciences and technology and in economic and social history.

Human memory, both individual and collective, figures among the key scientific concepts in the humanities, social sciences as well as natural sciences. Memory itself is a selective and individual phenomenon. Combined with an accelerated dynamic of developments, transformations in society and family, just as with novel technological possibilities, these aspects of the human memory come out into the forefront yet more powerfully, while forming (and deforming), in a natural and well-aimed manner, the culture of memory, the culture of recalling or goal-directed forgetting. Once again, this subject is multidisciplinary, concentrating primarily on clarifying the origin and evolution of historical memory relating to the scientific and technological potential of the Czech lands. Students will be encouraged to analyze the changes of this historical consciousness in the course of its development until it turned – in the 19th century – into a major component of the ideology shaping the modern Czech nation. The phenomenon of collective memory may be grasped as a specific source of history adding to the comprehensive picture of the society under scrutiny. Moreover, memory is studied as a phenomenon subjected to its own developments and changes, both in time and in space (the actual nature and intensity of historical memory varies in different cultures). Another aspect to be examined will be the transfer of historical memory – oral tradition, written texts, pictures, memorials, tombstones, souvenirs, celebrations, as located, for instance, in space, e.g. historic industrial sites (factories), technological projects (for example the Vltava Cascade, a system of river dams), technical thinking (moments in technological development, scholarly conferences, industrial exhibitions), i.e. places of memory, or the way such memory is utilized (e.g. to legitimize certain demands). Part and parcel of this perception may also be so-called oral history, mapping the sources of such memory of societal developments, primarily in the 20th century, and critically publishing and interpreting them.

Pre-industrial landscape, also referred to as rural cultural landscape, which lasted from the Neolithic to the late 18th or mid-19th century, is documented in historical written, pictorial, cartographic and physical sources that also capture pre-industrial technical tools, machines, materials and processes. The study of these belongs in the history of engineering and economy.

This subject analyzes, in a historic perspective, a hitherto completely untreated multidisciplinary picture of the role of university professors and the lifestyle of technicians (Between Scientific Milieu, National Prestige and Entrepreneurial Activities) in the European region on the example of the Czech lands and Czechoslovakia from the 1980s to the end of the 20th century (1989). The great industrial upsurge in the given period unleashed speedy development of the technical sciences and information, their transfer throughout the world and, consequently, the growing impact of technology and technical specialists on the everyday life of professional people and laymen alike. The role of technical education and of its scientific climate kept rising, caused by the needs of involving university-educated technical specialists in everyday economic life, in national activities and in working and entrepreneurial interconnections. In turn, these links duly affected the life of the given society as a whole.

This subject area sets out to analyze (accompanying) documentation in the individual branches of science and technology, as seen by the program History of Sciences and Technology, but also from the viewpoint of museology. Documentation facilitating evaluation of general safety or product compliance with the requirements of its structure, commodity-defined by respective guidelines, will be primarily researched. In case of products, this involves documentation in the extent providing for their manufacture in accordance with the phase of product design, manufacture and function. The research stage involves a whole package of processes, describing the actual procedure of scientific and technological investigation. Research in this subject is related to the historical evolution of technology, exact sciences and, in general terms, industrialization and development of the individual industrial branches.