Tesla (stylized as TESLA) is a Czech brand of electronic appliances. The name was originally used by a state-owned conglomerate that was the monopoly producer of electronic appliances and components in the former

Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia The Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, ČSSR, formerly known from 1948 to 1960 as the Czechoslovak Republic or Fourth Czechoslovak Republic, was the official name of Czechoslovakia from 1960 to 29 March 1990, when it was renamed the Czechoslovak ...

. The conglomerate was founded in 1946 and ran until 1991, when it was privatised. The Tesla name is used by its successor company and former subsidiaries in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Company

The company was established as ''Elektra'' on 18 January 1921 and renamed Tesla on 7 March 1946. A founding ceremony took place on 10 August 1946 at the Mikrofon Factory in Strašnice attended by government ministers from Czechoslovakia,

Yugoslavia Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label= Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavij ...

and Macedonia. It was named after the pioneer scientist

Nikola Tesla Nikola Tesla ( ; ,"Tesla"
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. ; 1856 – 7 January 1943 ...

, but when the association with a Serbian American became politically inconvenient it was explained as abbreviation from , which means "low-current technology". Tesla had several production locations, including those at Liptovský Hrádok,

Hradec Králové Hradec Králové (; german: Königgrätz) is a city of the Czech Republic. It has about 91,000 inhabitants. It is the capital of the Hradec Králové Region. The historic centre of Hradec Králové is well preserved and is protected by law as an ...

Pardubice Pardubice (; german: Pardubitz) is a city in the Czech Republic. It has about 89,000 inhabitants. It is the capital city of the Pardubice Region and lies on the Elbe River. The historic centre is well preserved and is protected as an urban monum ...

Žďár nad Sázavou Žďár nad Sázavou (; german: Saar) is a town in the Vysočina Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 20,000 inhabitants. It is situated on a major rail link between Prague and Brno. The town both industrial and tourist centre. It is known ...

Bratislava Bratislava (, also ; ; german: Preßburg/Pressburg ; hu, Pozsony) is the capital and largest city of Slovakia. Officially, the population of the city is about 475,000; however, it is estimated to be more than 660,000 — approximately 140% of ...

, and Nižná. Some of them became independent state-owned companies. After the

fall of communism The Revolutions of 1989, also known as the Fall of Communism, was a revolutionary wave that resulted in the end of most communist states in the world. Sometimes this revolutionary wave is also called the Fall of Nations or the Autumn of Nat ...

in Czechoslovakia, Tesla struggled to compete with firms at home and abroad, which resulted in dramatic downsizing and privatization of the majority of its stores and production facilities. Tesla's logo is a rare sight in the present-day

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...

and

Slovakia Slovakia (; sk, Slovensko ), officially the Slovak Republic ( sk, Slovenská republika, links=no ), is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the ...

, as only a few of its subsidiaries have survived. One of its former subsidiaries, the Slovak JJ Electronic in Čadca is known for its production of

vacuum tubes A vacuum tube, electron tube, valve (British usage), or tube (North America), is a device that controls electric current flow in a high vacuum between electrodes to which an electric potential difference has been applied. The type known as a ...

and SEV Litovel produces high-end turntables for the Austrian Pro-Ject company. The company name survived as Tesla a.s., a private company whose shares trade on the Prague stock exchange. Tesla a.s. manufactures of radio and security equipment for military and commercial use. Tesla a.s. took a series of legal cases against the American company Tesla, Inc. (formerly Tesla Motors, Inc.), resulting in an agreement in October 2010, establishing a coexistence of Tesla trademarks and regulating relationships between the two companies. After a three year period in which an Irish-owned financial company was the majority shareholder in Tesla a.s. a controlling interest was acquired by Inter-Sat Ltd of

Brno Brno ( , ; german: Brünn ) is a city in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. Located at the confluence of the Svitava and Svratka rivers, Brno has about 380,000 inhabitants, making it the second-largest city in the Czech Republic ...

in 2011. Tesla a.s. sells

set-top box A set-top box (STB), also colloquially known as a cable box and historically television decoder, is an information appliance device that generally contains a TV-tuner input and displays output to a television set and an external source of s ...

es, antennas, robotic vacuum cleaners, soundbars, motion detectors and multifunctional pressure cookers. In 2015 the company added batteries for home and industrial use to its product range.

Products

The original Tesla concern developed a wide product range including televisions, radio receivers, transistors, integrated circuits, visual display units, loudspeakers, gramophones, cassette decks, Compact Disc players and videocassette recorders. However, the quantity produced was often insufficient for industrial customers and some products became obsolete because they were not updated; e.g. one particular type of

diode A diode is a two-terminal electronic component that conducts current primarily in one direction (asymmetric conductance); it has low (ideally zero) resistance in one direction, and high (ideally infinite) resistance in the other. A diod ...

was manufactured for over 30 years without modification. Some products were comparable with those from international producers e.g. silicon controlled rectifiers (SCRs) or

power transistor A power semiconductor device is a semiconductor device used as a switch or rectifier in power electronics (for example in a switch-mode power supply). Such a device is also called a power device or, when used in an integrated circuit, a power IC. ...

s and Tesla exported them to other countries in

Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is a subregion of the European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russia, whi ...

. A few products were exported to western countries, for example, the NC 470 turntable rebranded as the NAD 5120, and the NC 450, NC 452, NC 430 turntables sold under the tradename Lenco. In 1953, the production of the first Czechoslovak television, the Tesla 4001A, began in Strašnice. The first Czechoslovak color television, the Tesla 4401A, began manufacturing in 1974. The best-known Tesla products internationally were the 308U Talisman bakelite radio designed by Igor Didov of Tesla Bratislava and made by several Tesla company branches between 1953 and 1958 and the Sonet duo reel-to-reel tape recorder (1959-1965). Tesla was also known for its KRTP-86 Tamara military passive radar (TESLA Pardubice, 1986), which was claimed to be the only one in the world able to detect stealth aircraft.

Gallery

File:Höritz Museum - Fernseher Tesla 40001A.jpg, Tesla 4001A, the first Czechoslovak television (1953) File:Den s technikou 2019 E02. Rádio Maestro.jpg, Tesla Maestro (1958) File:Electron microscope Tesla B5 242 CSSR UiO 1958 IMG 1627.JPG, Tesla BS 242 electron microscope (1958) File:Tesla PCC88.jpg, Tesla PCC88 vacuum tube File:VÚRT synthesizer (c.1949, c.1952-1962, or 1960s), for Sound Studio HAMU, by Výzkumném Ústavu Rozhlasu a Televize - left part - ČMH el. kytary.jpg, VÚRT synthesizer with twelve Tesla electronic oscillators File:Sonet Duo 2.JPG, Portable reel tape recorder Sonet Duo (1959) File:Q-meter Tesla BM 560.jpg, Tesla BM 560

Q meter A Q meter is a piece of equipment used in the testing of radio frequency circuits. It has been largely replaced in professional laboratories by other types of impedance measuring devices, though it is still in use among radio amateurs. It was d ...

(1977) File:Tesla Kvintet portable radio receiver.jpg, Tesla Kvintet radio receiver (1978) File:Audio mixer Tesla.jpg, Tesla ERT 032 audio mixer used for sport broadcasting File:Domácí telefon Tesla typ 4EP110 3611, zepředu.jpg, Tesla DT 85 home telephone File:Tesla Tuner 3606 A.jpg, Tesla 3606A tuner (1981) File:Pořežany, muzeum, radiopřijímač.jpg, Tesla 1038A Duo radio gramophone(1984) File:Tesla Color 425.jpg, Tesla 4425A "Color 425" (1986) File:KL Tesla MHB8080.jpg, Tesla MHB8080 micoprocessor, a clone of the Intel 8080 File:PMD 85-1.jpg, Tesla PMD 85 home computer File:Tesla OPRL-4.jpg, Tesla OPRL-4 air traffic control radar File:Бывший радиополигон РКИИГА - panoramio - alinco fan.jpg, Tesla radio equipment at the Riga Civil Aviation Engineers Institute File:KRTP-86 Tamara, VTM Lešany.jpg, Tesla Tamara passive sensor mounted on a

Tatra 815 The Tatra 815 is a truck family, produced by Czech company Tatra. It uses the traditional tatra concept of rigid backbone tube and swinging half-axles giving independent suspension. The vehicles are available in 4x4, 6x6, 8x8, 10x8, 10x10, 1 ...

chassis (1987-1881)

Company

Products

Gallery

References

External links