Could you imagine life without the light bulb, the fridge, the computer or the humble wheel? Although most inventions were made abroad, Slovakia too can boast of contributions that have changed the world for the better. Have you heard of these famous Slovak inventors?
The parachute, Štefan Banič
In 1912, Štefan Banič, born on 23. November 1870 in Neštich (now Smolenice), witnessed a tragic accident. It shook him so deeply that he began to think about designing a parachute, and as early as 1913 he submitted a prototype parachute design to the US authorities for assessment. It was based on a telescopic, umbrella-like frame carrying a fabric canopy, and was fastened with straps to the airman’s body around the chest, beneath the arms. In 1914, in Washington, the inventor Štefan Banič demonstrated his parachute to the public and to representatives of the US Patent Office and the US air service, jumping safely with it from the roof of a 15-storey building.
Would you believe that this was one of the first officially recorded parachute jumps in human history? The parachute even went on to be used in the global conflicts of the First and Second World Wars that followed. Yet the invention brought Banič neither wealth nor fame. In 1920 he returned to his native village and lived quietly as a master bricklayer. His name resurfaced a few years later when, in 1930, together with his brother Ján and the Vajsábel and Valo siblings, he discovered the underground wonders of the Driny cave near Smolenice.
String instruments, Ján Dopjera
Ján was born in 1893 in the village of Stráže and moved to Los Angeles in the USA at the age of just 15. After arriving in the USA, he opened a joinery workshop on the outskirts of the city, where, among other things, he repaired and later also made violins, guitars and other instruments. One day a cabaret owner visited him, asking him to make the guitar sound louder in his orchestra. Ján solved the problem and, as early as 1926, applied for a patent for an all-metal guitar with 3 resonators.
Investors soon came forward and success was not long in coming. Together with his brothers, he founded the National String Instrument Corporation. Following disagreements, however, they left the company and founded DOBRO – from the first syllables of Dopyera Brothers – where he later realised another stringed-instrument idea. Unlike its predecessor, this guitar was not all-metal but wooden, with a single resonator in the centre instead of three, giving the instrument a much cleaner, more ringing tone.
VINEA, Ján Farkaš
Twelve years after Kofola first saw the light of day, another excellent drink arrived on Czechoslovak shop shelves – Vinea. The original aim of its inventor, Associate Professor Ján Farkaš, was to offer people a natural drink: above all free of preservatives, pasteurised and, of course, tasting of grapes. The winery in Pezinok was given a difficult task – to create an inexpensive, tasty non-alcoholic drink that could compete with foreign drinks. They developed a beverage from leftover grape must produced in the making of table wines. The brand of the new Czechoslovak soft drink Vinea was created as early as 1973. Vinea is Latin for vineyard, and the inventor’s daughters helped come up with the name. Farkaš understood perfectly that people wanted a natural drink rather than the artificial sweet lemonades of which there was no shortage on the market.
Vinea was officially launched on the Czechoslovak market in 1974. The first drinks were bottled in 0,25 dcl bottles, and under socialism Vinea cost 1,50 Kčs. A year later it won a prestigious award at the food fair in Brno, the Golden Salima. The drink was initially produced only at the winery in Pezinok, but owing to strong consumer demand, bottling later began in Nitra and Banská Bystrica as well. From 1980, Vinea was also bottled in 7 dcl bottles. From the mid-1980s, Vinea – one of the few drinks from the socialist bloc behind the Iron Curtain – began to be exported to the USA and Canada.
The helicopter, Ján Bahýľ
This well-known inventor was born in 1856 in the village of Zvolenská Slatina. He had an exceptional gift for engineering and tackled a wide range of problems in military science, military construction, mechanical engineering and other fields. This made it easy for him to devise numerous improvements, particularly to artillery and railway transport. As early as 1894 he produced a design for a human-powered helicopter, and in 1895 he received a patent privilege to build the proposed patent. The deadline for realising it, however, was not met.
He later made contact with the coachbuilder Anton Marschall. It is also little known that, together with A. Marschall, he built the first car with a petrol engine and battery in Slovakia between 1895 – 1897. From 1895 – 1914 he chaired an aeronautical organisation in Martin. In 1978 a documentary film about Ján Bahýľ’s work, entitled The Man Who Outdid Edison, was made. He was granted 17 military and other technical patents, for example for a balloon with an air turbine, a steam-powered tank, a coupling mechanism for railway wagons and the lift at Bratislava Castle.
Mine pumping engines, Jozef Karol Hell
This Slovak master engineer and inventor was born in 1713 in Banská Štiavnica. He was the son of Matej Kornel Hell, an engineer, designer and builder of the Štiavnica tajchy (water reservoirs), and the brother of Maximilián Hell, a renowned astronomer. It was thanks to his father that he became so familiar with the design of pumping engines. Together with his father and the scientist, mathematician, cartographer and builder Samuel Mikovíni, he helped create a remarkable system of water reservoirs – the tajchy – around Banská Štiavnica, which supplied energy for mining equipment. He became famous for his ingenious mining machines and pumps.