On 21 September 1931, the National Engineering Works, the largest pre-war automotive manufacturing enterprise, signed a license agreement with the Italian Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino company. This resulted in the establishment of the Polski Fiat joint-stock company, within the framework of which the Polish party, in exchange for know-how, committed to creating a network of service stations and repair workshops for Fiat and Polski Fiat cars.
Between 1935-39, production of the Polski Fiat 508 was launched under a license agreement, and in 1936 it was given the commercial name “Junak”. Even though the advertising slogan for the new car read “the most economical of the comfortable ones, the most comfortable of the economical ones”, at a price of 7200 złotys the vehicle was a luxury item, available only to a few.
The car has a body-on-frame design that is typical of the 1930s. An in-line, four-cylinder, flathead petrol engine is located at the front of the vehicle and is connected to a four-gear transmission that drives the rear axle via a propeller shaft. Both axles are rigid and suspended on leaf springs, with hydraulic arm shock absorbers damping the vibrations. The vehicle body is made of steel. An interesting solution can be found in the central part of the roof which is made of dermatoid and acts to damp vibration and stress. The Polski Fiat 508 III was based on the design of its Italian counterpart, the Fiat 508 Balilla, but it featured modifications introduced by Polish engineers to adapt the vehicle to the difficult road conditions and increase its strength. It was the first car to be mass-produced in Poland, and it became the basis for developing derivative versions for delivery and military applications.
The purchase of the licence contributed to a significant improvement in the level of advancement of the Polish automotive industry. Contrary to the popular view, the Polski Fiat was not the most popular car brand before the war in Poland: Chevrolets, for example, were bought more frequently. Up until September 1939, around 3500 Polski Fiat 508 III cars were manufactured, as well as 1000 frames as parts for bodies, and 2500 derivative variants.

The piece of wooden pipe presented here was used in a historic water supply line in Kraków. It is a pine trunk drilled internally using simple tools. The first hydroengineering solutions that can be considered to be a water supply network were built in Kraków in the 14th century. Before that, city dwellers had to draw water from public, municipal, or private wells, or use the services of water carriers who delivered water in tanks. Kraków’s water supply came from water received through a rurmus (a machine supplying water at the appropriate pressure) from a branch of the Rudawa river. The rurmus operated as follows: the water wheel took the energy to move from the river flow and transferred water to a tank placed at a height, the purpose of which was to ensure adequate pressure in pipes supplying the city with water. Not only was the water supply system a major convenience for Kraków’s inhabitants, but also, as its construction was expensive, it was a hallmark of the city’s wealth. Unfortunately, the technical condition of the system deteriorated over time and the city’s coffers lacked the funds for its overhaul. Kraków’s first water pipeline was destroyed by the Swedes in 1655. The destruction of the rurmus by the raiders was intended to deprive the defending town of access to water. After that, Kraków remained without a municipal water supply system until the early 20th century. The hygienic and sanitary condition of the city deteriorated significantly, which had a major impact on the inhabitants’ health and life expectancy. On 14 February 1901, a modern water supply network was commissioned with a water intake at Bielany. Continually expanded and modernised, the network remains in use up until today. The piece of wooden pipe from Kraków’s water supply system presented here was found during the earthworks of the Main Market Square redesign.

References:
R. Wierzbicki, Wodociągi Krakowa, Kraków 2011, book available in the Repository of the Kraków Technical University at: https://suw.biblos.pk.edu.pl/viewResource&mId=444027 (Accessed: 9.05.2021).

The Newton portable computer came out of the first results of Apple’s work on a miniature mobile device with a touchscreen and operated with a stylus. The design offered a range of breakthrough solutions, one of them being the handwriting recognition system. The computer’s design used a high performance, energy efficient CPU of the ARM family, which later became standard in this type of device and is still widely used in tablets and smartphones.
The Newton’s main purpose was time management and performing simple office tasks. The content of its built-in memory could be synchronised with computers using the Windows or MacOS operating systems over a serial interface. A wireless connection was also available in the form of an infrared port. An additional extension card allowed the Newton to be connected to the telephone network in order to send and receive faxes or use basic Internet functionalities.
Eight different devices in the Newton family were launched between 1993 and 1998. Due to its high price, the device was moderately successful on the market. Its production was discontinued soon after Steve Jobs returned to Apple as CEO . The Newton did, however, inspire other manufacturers of mobile devices, which were manufactured in increasing numbers from the late 1990s. Apple returned to this category of products in 2007 with the launch of the iPhone.

Author: Marek Więcek

The Kankan radio was manufactured by Zakłady Radiowe Diora in 1966-1969. It is a four-valve superheterodyne equipped with two germanium diodes. The chassis of the device is made of a printed circuit board to which electronic components are mounted. It was, at the time, a relatively new solution introduced at Diora in the early 1960s. The Kankan was designed to receive radio waves in UHF, short, medium, and long wave bands. It has a broadband magnetoelectric Tonsil GD 14,5-9,5 speaker and a ferrite antenna. On the back panel there are sockets for a connecting an external antenna, a ground wire, a tape recorder, gramophone, or an additional speaker. It is an AC-powered tabletop radio.
The Kankan has an elongated, slightly flattened, shape. The housing of painted plywood was made by Spółdzielcze Zakłady Wyrobów Drzewnych Technodrzew in Dzierżoniów. The lower, top, and rear panels are rectangular. The side panels are roughly square in shape and have two triangle cutaways at the top and bottom ends of their front edges. Between them there is a short section of the original edge of the wall. The shape follows the shape of the front panel, slightly retracted inside the housing. The panel is divided into three rectangular areas made of plastic: the upper and lower part are black, the middle section is in a milky grey colour with beige-grey edges. The lower and middle sections are of similar height, while the upper panel is three times the height of either of them. The bottom and top part of the panel are angled. In the top part, on the left, there is a speaker grille, and the scale occupies the right side. In the middle part is the radio’s name and three potentiometers: the power and volume knob, the range switch, and the tuning knob. On the bottom part on the left is a ventilation grille. The entire design keeps to minimalist aesthetics, as was typical for communist countries. Its characteristic feature is the use of geometric shapes and patterns, which is reflected in the blocky typeface in which the names and digits on the device are rendered. The same aesthetics are also achieved by juxtaposing materials such as shiny metal, flat-coloured plastic and wood with an organic grain pattern.
The Kankan receiver was also manufactured in two variants that were different to the one described here. The Kankan II (made in 1967-1968) uses three vacuum tubes and is not able to receive the UHF band. The cuboid housing of the Kankan 3 (of 1968) is fully made of wood, and the flat front panel is made of black plastic: the speaker is installed directly in the housing. The Kankan’s twin model is the Sarabanda radio, which only differed in its Bakelite housing.

Author: Filip Wróblewski

A projector is an optical device for projecting enlarged images on a screen. The first known device displaying still images with an oil lamp as a light source was illustrated in a sketchbook by the Italian doctor and engineer Johannes de Fontana. The colour image to be displayed was painted on glass. De Fontana’s sketch could have been the inspiration for the building of the so-called laterna magica in the 17th century. Invention of this device is ascribed to either Athansius Kircher, who described and illustrated a device reflecting sunlight in a mirror through lenses onto a screen, or to Christiaan Huygens, who presented the first working “magical lantern” in 1659.
A prototype of the Bajka picture projector presented here was built in 1953. Its design was developed by Wiktor Bielecki and Tadeusz Zaborowski. The purpose of the projector is to display (typically on a wall or canvas) still, monochrome, or colour transparencies on positive film recorded on a tape with a width of 35 mm and frame dimensions of 18 x 24 mm. The tape with the slides is not cut into pieces, but is used whole, wound on a roll. The roll is placed in a carrier so that the image or text in the window is inverted, and then it is moved by hand, using a knob. Displaying images is possible thanks to a purpose-built optical projection arrangement comprising a concave mirror and a lightbulb placed parallel to the condenser (an optical element for homogeneous lighting of the film). Improper positioning of the arrangement results in the image being out of focus and covered in colourful smudges. The focus of the projected image is manually adjusted using a rotary, screw-in lens.
The Bajka projector was built by Łódzkie Zakłady Kinotechniczne from 1953. The housings of the first units were made of enamelled metal, which was later replaced by stamped Bakelite. Production of the device ended in the 1960s. In the 1970s, the enterprise was renamed to Łódzkie Zakłady Kinotechniczne Prexer, belonging to the Union of Mechanised Household Equipment Industry “Predom”. Apart from projectors and slide projectors, the enterprise manufactured photocopiers, wood machining devices, and angling reels. Łódzkie Zakłady Kinotechniczne ended its operation at the beginning of the 1990s.
Thanks to their wide ranging applications, slide projectors were very popular. They were used for educational purposes in kindergartens and schools, as well as at home, to view pictorial stories, illustrated on slides. In the 1990s projectors were replaced by newer technologies allowing projection of moving images.

Authors: Beata Krzaczyńska, Piotr Turowski

The Melodia is the first reel-to-reel tape recorder manufactured in Poland. It was developed by a team of employees of Zakłady Radiowe im. Marcina Kasprzaka in Warsaw, headed by mgr inż. R. Patyra. The device was created in 1958.
The Melodia is a mains-powered portable device, with an electrical system based on vacuum tubes. Thanks to the numerous input sockets, the tape recorder enables connection of a microphone, gramophone, or radio receiver that provide the source of the recorded sound. Two separate sets of half-track heads allow two-track mono recording of the sound, with maximum recording durations of 2×30 or 2×60 minutes (depending on the magnetic tape used). Recording and playback of sound is possible in both tape directions without the need to turn the reels around (making it a system similar to the auto-reverse mechanism). The drive mechanism allows tape movement at a linear speed of 9.5 or 19 cm/s. An electron-ray tube tuning indicator enables control of the recording process quality. In the top panel of the tape recorder there are two symmetrically placed rows of button switches used for controlling tape movement. The Tonsil magnetic and electric speaker, installed inside the wooden housing, is upholstered with a maroon and dark orange leatherette and allows playback of recordings. According to the manufacturer’s instructions, the tape recorder was intended primarily for “social users, e.g. schools, theatres, radio stations and similar, as well as individual customers”. The choice of these target consumers seems to justify what was, at the time, an astronomical price – 6,000 zlotys, with the average monthly salary in 1958 being 1,348 zlotys.
The tape recorder’s smooth operation, i.e., the even movement of tape on both reels, is ensured by the built-in Tonsil SS-60 motor, which was designed for the purpose of the Melodia. It is a synchronous motor with a cylindrical design in which a copper winding of three strands (stator) generates a rotating magnetic field that moves the rotor inside when supplied with power. Thanks to this design, the rotation speeds of the magnetic field and rotor are identical. The mechanism uses the hysteresis phenomenon, described in 1890 by the Scottish physicist James Freddie Ewing, which involves the dependency of the current state of properties of body excited by external factor on states at moments preceding the excitement, which involves a delay of the reaction to the external factor.

Author: Filip Wróblewski

A vacuum pump is a device for removing gases and generating vacuum in a closed vessel. The presented pump is a manual, single-piston device used for conducting experiments in educational institutions. The device is set on a wooden base, to which a piston with a wooden handle is attached. The piston moves in a cylinder ending in two cut-off valves below a plate. After a glass dome is put on the plate, air is sucked off from under the dome by moving the piston. The company which produced the presented model, Wytwórnia i Skład Pomocy Naukowych F.M. Złotnicki, was established in Lviv in 1893. It continued operation until 1939, when it was nationalised by the Soviet government. The factory manufactured and marketed teaching equipment and aids, such as zoological specimens, anatomy and botany models, globes, aquariums, microscopes, geographic and historical maps for physics, chemistry, geography and biology classrooms in schools. The factory had their own mechanics and taxidermy workshops.

References:
H. Wiórkiewicz, Kolekcja Leopolis Muzeum Niepodległości w Warszawie 1992 – 2006, „Niepodległość i Pamięć” 2006, issue 13/3 (24), pp. 311-346, https://bazhum.muzhp.pl/media//files/Niepodleglosc_i_Pamiec/Niepodleglosc_i_Pamiec-r2006-t13-n3_(24)/Niepodleglosc_i_Pamiec-r2006-t13-n3_(24)-s311-346/Niepodleglosc_i_Pamiec-r2006-t13-n3_(24)-s311-346.pdf, accessed: 2.06.2021.

The Szarotka portable mono radio receiver is the first radio of this type to be mass-produced in Poland after the War. In terms of components and the electrical system it is a superheterodyne – a receiver that uses vacuum tubes to play, transforming radio waves into electrical signals. The device has a built-in ferrite antenna. Thanks to its dimensions and small weight, the radio was a faithful companion on travels, during walks, and on picnics. The design of the portable Szarotka radio was created in 1956 by the design team at Zakłady Radiowe im. Marcina Kasprzaka in Warsaw, modelled on the tourist radio Grazietta 541B manufactured under licence from the Austrian Siemens company. The Szarotka is powered from batteries or the mains, through a power supply unit in the form of a base with special pins. It is equipped with a leather case with a shoulder strap. When powered from batteries, the radio can operate for between 25 and 30 hours. Initially, the Szarotka was produced as a two-band radio, offering medium and long-wave reception. A fragment of the shortwave band was added later, making it a three-band radio, which allowed it to be distinguished from the Austrian original, which could only receive medium wave. This convenience allowed the listeners to receive Radio Luxembourg – which was illegal in Poland – and listen to pop music from outside of the Communist bloc.
The radio was manufactured in three colour versions: cream, mustard and coral. In terms of appearance and the shape of its housing it does not depart from the original Grazietta 541B. At the top of the front wall there is an elongated scale with a magic eye tube on the left, and the Tonsil GD 9/0,5 magnetoelectric speaker installed below, behind an openwork cover of slightly protruding bands of plastic. The body of the device was enclosed on the side and from below with a metal band holding the front and back panel. On the top there is a retractable handle for carrying the device. On the right-hand side is a switch and a volume knob, while on the top there are band switching buttons and switches for power supply modes – normal and energy saving.

Authors: Piotr Turowski, Filip Wróblewski

This meter is a device used for measuring electrical load (ampere hours) and electrical energy (watt hours) of the direct current received from the network by a consumer. At it most simple, the operation of the meter is based on the movement of pendulums connected to the grid voltage. The pendulums move at a given speed in the electric field created by coils connected to the power network. The characteristic movement of the pendulums is then transferred to a mechanism that allows the value of the load and energy received to be read. This type of meter was widely used until early 20th century, alongside designs using an electrical motor or electrochemical phenomena (hydrogen and mercury meters).
The pendulum meter presented here was produced by the German company H. Aron, Elektrizitätszähler Fabrik GmbH, which was established in 1885 by Hermann Aron who worked in physics and electrical engineering. The company’s founder was also one of the authors of the concept of the pendulum meter and the owner of a patent for this device, and the company itself became a global leader in the production of energy meters. In 1897, a Viennese branch of the company was opened and the model seen here was manufactured there.
Interesting fact: Pendulum meters went out of use partly because they were expensive and complicated, but mainly because of the increased popularity of alternating current, the consumption of which could be measured using different devices.

References:
Aron Herman, a biographic entry published in the „Polin. Wirtualny Sztetl” database, https://sztetl.org.pl/pl/biogramy/4841-aron-hermann (Accessed: 9.05.2021).
P. Olszowiec, Pomiary energii elektrycznej liczą już 140 lat. Najpierw ważono miedź…, „Energia Gigawat” 2010, nr 1, https://rynek-energii-elektrycznej.cire.pl/pliki/2/pom-energ-el-licza-140-lat.pdf (Accessed: 9.05.2021).

The induction meter is the oldest (known already at the end of the 19th/beginning of the 20th century) and most widely used device to be used for the purposes of billing of alternating current power consumption. The operating principle of the device is based on the movement of a rotary disc in a magnetic field created by coils through which current flows. The readings can be read out on a drum counter. Nowadays, apart from induction meters, digital (electronic) meters are increasingly used, in which the flow of energy consumed by the customer generates impulses that are counted by the device. The main advantage of such meters is that they allow the remote reading of meters (via radio) without the need for someone to physically inspect the meter. Just like induction meters, electronic meters can be used in single- or three-phase systems. Furthermore, some electronic meters enable the prepayment of a specified amount of electricity by the customer. This works much like the prepaid offers of mobile phone providers.
The meter presented here was made in the factory of Spółka Akcyjna Przemysłu Elektrycznego Czechowice, which has been in existence since 1921. The company produced many types of electrical engineering, installation, and lighting equipment. It is still in operation today, after several ownership transformations.
Interesting fact: Fraudsters sometimes attempt to reduce the power meter reading by placing a magnet against the housing. In fact, this can actually increase the reading displayed by the device.

References:
S. Bolkowski, Teoria obwodów elektrycznych, Warsaw 2010.
S. Krakowiak, Podstawy elektrotechniki – zagadnienia wybrane, Warsaw 2006, http://www.elektrycywiejscy.irsep.org/downloads/podstawy-sklad.pdf (Accessed: 9.05.2021).
O nas, official Kontakt Simon website, https://www.kontakt-simon.com.pl/pl/Firma/Historia-firmy.html (Accessed: 9.05.2021).