Tomas Kopecky

From the first time his father had told him about being hired by Parisian Société Électrique Edison to work on the construction of the little steam power plant on Vlhká Street in Brno, Tomáš Kopecky had wanted to be an engineer. The four large dynamos had been sent from New York City and they mesmerized the young  Kopecky after he had been successful in badgering his father to get permission for a visit.  The electricity from that plant went a short ways to what was then called the Deutsches Stadttheater. The city was called Brünn back then too under Austrian rule. When that opera theater opened in 1882 people said it was the first public building in the world to have electric lights. Although Thomas Edison had designed the plans, it wasn’t until 1911 that the inventor came to the city to see the installation in person, and the boy managed to be there to meet the man. Then the Great War changed everything, and in the aftermath Kopecky grew fascinated with the machines of war and how to employ them. In the early years of the First Republic he set his sights on the Československé armády and the military academy at Hranice.