The Standard of Technical Education in the Austrian Monarchy and Its Being Surpassed: the Case of Karel Václav Zenger
Abstract
The development of industry and technology in the long 19th century called for more and more technically educated people. One of the elementary fields that needed to be mastered by all secondary-school or university-educated technical experts was physics, at the end of the 19th century considered to be a field in which everything important had already discovered and explained.
Karel Václav Zenger was one of the most influential and at the same time controversial professors of physics in the Bohemian Lands. He lectured at the Institute of Technology in Prague (first in German, after 1869 in Czech).
His controversiality lies mainly in his peculiar explanation of numerous physical phenomena then studied in the world, founded on an only insufifficient theoretical preparation. His interest in astronomy led to the creation of some of the earliest astronomical photographs in the Czech history of photography.
In addition, he was an excellent speaker and populariser of physics through enlightening articles and lectures.