Emil von Škoda

"Emil Skoda" redirects here. For the fictional psychiatrist from the television series Law & Order, see Emil Skoda (Law & Order).

Emil Ritter von Škoda^[a] (Czech: Emil rytíř Škoda [ˈɛmɪl ˈrɪciːr̝̊ ˈʃkoda]; 18 November 1839 – 8 August 1900) was a Czech engineer and industrialist, founder of Škoda Works, the predecessor of today's Škoda Auto and Škoda Transportation.

Emil von Škoda
Born	(1839-11-18)18 November 1839 Plzeň, Bohemia, Austrian Empire
Died	8 August 1900(1900-08-08) (aged 60) Selzthal, Duchy of Styria, Austria-Hungary
Nationality	Bohemian
Occupation	Founder of the Škoda Works
Parents	František Škoda (father) Anna Říhová (mother)

Škoda's grave, St. Nicholas Cemetery, Plzeň

Life and work

Born Emil Škoda in Plzeň on 18 November 1839 to a physician and politician František Škoda, and mother Anna Říhová. Škoda studied engineering in Prague and Karlsruhe and in 1866 became chief engineer of the machine factory of Ernst Fürst von Waldstein-Wartenberg, founded in 1859 at Plzeň. He bought the factory three years later, in 1869, and began to expand it, building a railway connection to the facility in 1886 and adding an arms factory in 1890 to produce machine guns for the Austro-Hungarian Army. His facilities continued to expand over the next decade, and he incorporated his holdings in 1899 as the Škoda Works, which would become famous for its arms production in both World War I and World War II and for a wide range of other industrial and transportation products.

Notes

1. Regarding personal names: Ritter is a title, translated approximately as 'Sir' (denoting a knight), not a first or middle name. There is no equivalent female form.
   In German personal names, von is a preposition which approximately means 'of' or 'from' and usually denotes some sort of nobility. While von (always lower case) is part of the family name or territorial designation, not a first or middle name, if the noble is referred to by their last name, use Schiller, Clausewitz or Goethe, not von Schiller, etc.

External links

• Biography in Czech (archived link)
• Emil Škoda: Czech or German? (Czech-language article)