Praga, The Hundred-Year Saga

Praga’s origins date bac k to early 1871, when 30 wealthy burghers, entrepreneurs and landowners founded the First Czecho-Moravian Machinery Factory (“První českomoravská továrna na stroje v
Praze”) in Prague, as a shareholding company with basic capital funds of one million Austro-Hungarian gulden, approximately $455,000. The owners planned to produce equipment for sugar refineries. Expansion of sugar beet production in Bohemia had led both to a rapid growth in the number of sugar processors and to a substantial unfilled demand for the machinery. In addition to expectations of a profitable business, the Bohemian founders had an important nationalist goal in mind as they established this new venture.