Bohemian engineer and industrialist (1839–1900)
"Emil Skoda" redirects here. For the fictional psychiatrist from the television series Law & Order, see
Emil Skoda (Law & Order).
Škoda's grave, St. Nicholas Cemetery, Plzeň
Emil Ritter[a] von Škoda[b] (Czech: Emil rytíř Škoda [ˈɛmɪl ˈrɪciːr̝̊ ˈʃkoda]; 18 November 1839 – 8 August 1900) was a Czech engineer and industrialist, founder of Škoda Works, the predecessor of today's Škoda Auto and Škoda Transportation.
Born Emil Škoda in Plzeň on 18 November 1839 to a physician and politician František Škoda, and mother Johanna-Margarethe Říhová. Škoda studied mechanical engineering for four semesters at the Polytechnic Institute in Prague (now part of the Czech Technical University in Prague) and completed his degree at the Technische Hochschule Karlsruhe in Germany (now Karlsruhe Institute of Technology). In 1866, he became chief engineer of the machine factory of Ernst Fürst von Waldstein-Wartenberg, founded in 1859 at Plzeň. He bought the factory three years later, in 1869, and began to expand it, building a railway connection to the facility in 1886 and adding an arms factory in 1890 to produce machine guns for the Austro-Hungarian Army. His facilities continued to expand over the next decade, and he incorporated his holdings in 1899 as the Škoda Works, which would become famous for its arms production in both World War I and World War II and for a wide range of other industrial and transportation products.
- ^ Regarding personal names: Ritter was a title before 1919, but now is regarded as part of the surname. It is translated as Knight. Before the August 1919 abolition of nobility as a legal class, titles preceded the full name when given (Graf Helmuth James von Moltke). Since 1919, these titles, along with any nobiliary prefix (von, zu, etc.), can be used, but are regarded as a dependent part of the surname, and thus come after any given names (Helmuth James Graf von Moltke). Titles and all dependent parts of surnames are ignored in alphabetical sorting. There is no equivalent feminine form.
- ^ In German personal names, von is a preposition which approximately means 'of' or 'from' and usually denotes some sort of nobility. While von (always lower case) is part of the family name or territorial designation, not a first or middle name, if the noble is referred to by their last name, use Schiller, Clausewitz or Goethe, not von Schiller, etc.
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Škoda's grave, St. Nicholas Cemetery, Plzeň
