Industrial Prague

The book captures Prague’s industrial development from the origin of the earliest manufactories prior to the mid-18th century to the dissolution of Austria-Hungary in 1918. It highlights the importance of Joseph II’s reforms for the development of manufactories as well as the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars for the transformation of production (handcrafted to factory), as well as the steam engine’s significance for the first engineering factories and other fields of industry in the slowly emerging industrial agglomeration in Prague. The author’s main focus is on engineering, electrotechnical, and automobile industries, juxtaposing this process with Prague’s urban development and the origin of Greater Prague after the Great War.