Czech inventors

Erich Roučka

(1888-1986)

Erich RoučkaErich Roučka In the year 1911 electric measuring instruments were started to be designed in a small workshop in Blansko, a town near Brno. It was the first workshop to produce these instruments in then Austro-Hungarian monarchy and one of the first workshops in Europe. It was a period of huge technical and industrial boom, when the steam and first electric engines could not do without electric measuring any more. One of the developers of the electric measuring instruments was engineer Erich Roučka, a distinguished Bohemian inventor. Under his guidance, the workshop quickly developed into a small factory. Workers grew familiar with the new technology in short time and they factory's products became famous.

War supplies during the First World War enabled enlargement and modernization of the production. The number of staff expanded into 120. The end of the war linked to the termination of military orders forced a change to be made in the manufacturing schedule. The owner of the factory managed to go through this complicated period by introducing the implementation of supplemental production of kitchen scales, however he soon returned to the production of the measuring instruments. The market demanded more complicated and exact instruments such as laboratory gantry and in 1929 the first recording equipment.

In second half of the 1920's the company boomed when the experience which Erich Roučka gained during his travels in America in 1919 and 1921 started to show. He was the first in Europe to set up an assembly line production of automatic stokehold adjustment. They were named Rouček's robots, with approval of Karel Čapek, the famous Czech writer and invetor of the term robot. Measuring instruments and stokehold registers with the make ER Meter and boiler-room regulation with the ER symbols became famous not only in Europe but also overseas. They were used largely in workshops and power stations, during the construction and verification of electro-distributing systems and in various laboratories. Instruments for hard conditions of metallurgy and mining industry were also constructed. A great deal of this production was installed in deck equipment of ships and other complicated environments. The key person was always Erich Roučka, a man with admirable creative invention and working diligence who was able to connect the potential of new technologies with practice.

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