The scene
The year was 1951. In Prague-Hostivař, a former mill on the grounds of a film studio became an unlikely setting for experimental nuclear physics. The equipment did not look like cinema machinery. It was an electrostatic cascade accelerator supplied by the Swiss company HAEFELY, intended to give researchers control over the energy of charged particles.
The engineering challenge
A local institutional history records a price of 3.2 million Czechoslovak crowns including accessories. It also records the difficult commissioning process. Those complications matter to the story: the leap from a delivered machine to a dependable scientific instrument required local expertise, troubleshooting and persistence. The accelerator eventually supported work on nuclear reactions, including radiation-related research.
Why it matters
The account contains a particularly intriguing recollection that this was the first accelerator of its type constructed by HAEFELY. That remains the view of an eyewitness in the 2005 historical publication; no independent survey of the maker’s entire early accelerator output is available to turn it into a global first. One machine, however, is beyond doubt: a high-voltage company contributed to the infrastructure of a new scientific field in a decidedly unconventional building.
Sources, scope and limits.
Institutional anniversary history, published in 2005, combines archival records and eyewitness testimony.
- AV ČR ÚJF 50 let Řež 1955–2005 Hostivař 1951 Haefely 1MeV archive and eyewitnessS-E4-020 · archive_catalog · original_institutional_pdf_text_and_page_images_verified
Visual quotations document individual historical points with named sources and creators; they are not a general image-library licence. Equipment claims are intentionally narrower than the surrounding institution’s activities.