Archive of National technical museum

National Technical Museum Archive
The shared research room of the NTM Archive and Architecture and Civil Engineering Archive is open Tuesday - Wednesday 9:00 - 17:00

email: badatelna@ntm.cz
tel.: +420 220 399 201

A publicly accessible archive of documents regarding the history of technology, science, industry, crafts, business and trade in the Czech Republic, with emphasis on European and world development.

The archive was founded in 1931 with the name: "Archive of history of technology, trade and technical work in the ČSR" and started functioning in 1932 as the 32nd professional group of the Association of the Czechoslovakian Technical Museum, a predecessor of the National Technical Museum. After the nationalization of the National Technical Museum, the archive, along with the library and several other departments, was consolidated into a so-called study and documentation group (SDS). In 1964, this was merged into the department of scientific-technical information (archive, library, bibliographic department). Afterwards, when it turned out that this merger was not functional, the archive was made a separate department again, and since 1969, it has functioned as an independent "archive for the history of technology and industry". In the fall of 1999 the archive, newly renamed the Archive of the National Technical Museum, acquired the status of "archive of significant importance", according to archiving law 343/1992 Sb., which classed it into its own, unique archive system. In consideration of the new responsibilities, placed upon it by archiving law 499/2004 Sb., the archive underwent an accreditation review. It received accreditation effective January 5th, 2009. The archive's study was opened that same day.

Leading the department during the period of the Association was the joint responsibility of professor Josef Šusta and professor Bedřich Mendl. Actual leadership of the department until the early 1960s was under Dr. Jan Klepl. After his departure, Dr. Karel Černý took the post. From 1990 until mid-2010, PhDr. Jan Hozák, was in charge; today it is led by PhDr. Zdeněk Vácha.

Among other treasures, the archive contains several hundred sets of technical drawings, professional documentation from widely varied disciplines, collections of biographical documents, not only about significant historical personalities of industry and technology, an extensive collection of photographs, posters and graphics. An inseparable part of the archive is the collections of archival material formerly labeled aeronautical archive, or railroad archive.