Swanson School of Engineering

Today we spent the entire day learning about the history of the Czech Republic and engineering’s role is shaping its industry and culture. The first lecture focused on the collection of states that comprised of the Czechoslovak Republic and how WWI & WWII influenced the interactions these states had. One thing I learned that I was surprised about was how German the country was. I knew that because of the proximity there would be German influences in culture and language but I vastly underestimated the amount of German population there was. Because of this melting pot of countries (Bulgaria, Austria, Poland, Germany, Slovakia, etc.) so many different skills and labor techniques were shared throughout the country. One specific skill that was driven due to demand was defense manufacturing. The Czech republic, as talked about in our second lecture, supplied ammunition and guns to both sides of many conflicts in Europe. Because of this and there mixing of cultures, they were often not included in warfare and were able to keep their people safe because of it. To this day, the Czech Republic still manufactures a large portion of tanks and guns and the mechanical side of engineering is important. Besides the two history lectures, we also go to take a tour of the Podoli Waterworks. I was particularly interested in learning about how they pump water around the city. They showed us early designs up pumping water through water mills and a piston that made me appreciate the engineering that goes into water transportation.