Page - 101 - in Nikola Tesla and the Graz Tech

101 The combination of criteria which was the Industrial Revolution reached the European continent and Austria, which was sceptical about the innovations, in a historical phase shift. The Habsburg monarchy became a source of impetus in the person of Arch- duke Johann who, in contrast to his imperial brother Franz I, was one of those ‘who, through reform, revolution and war, steered the old Europe out of its agrarian-feudal circumstances and into the modern world, into the bourgeois, industrial age’. (Grete Klingenstein) Styria and its capital became a place of his innovative activities. ‘It is necessary to acquire the knowledge of new technologies,’ noted the Archduke. On a journey to England, he supplemented his level of technical knowledge and recognised how to make up for the backwardness of his do- mestic economy: raw materials and energy had to be made available as impor- tant elements in production at acceptable prices in order to ensure competi- tiveness. The use of coal to help stem the energy shortage caused by the limited timber resources. Adjustment of transport capacities to the sharp rise in trade. Of great importance was Johann’s interest in technological problems in con- nection with his efforts to modernize mining, industry and agriculture, where- by the so-called Agrarian Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th centuries consisted less in introducing new labour-saving machines and techniques than in intensifying the use of land and labour. Johann, who initiated the Agricultural Test Facility in Annenstrasse, Graz, was convinced that the entire technology and its industrial application had to be based on a scientific but practice-oriented foundation, without losing its orientation towards practice. This view finally led to the founding of the Joanneum in Graz in 1811, which ultimately corresponded to the rapid development in all areas of technology and was also intended to be a museum of technology from the outset. At the Joanneum, in the State Library, in his own industrial enterprises, in the mining college at Vordernberg and in agricultural sample goods and in the construc- tion of the Semmering railway, the enlightened technocrat Johann lent a hand to bring about progress and have it brought about.