Exhibition opening “Patent Penkala”

The exhibition “Patent Penkala” presents to the public, for the first time in a comprehensive way, the life and work of this outstanding inventor, who spent his most productive years in Zagreb, where he realised most of his ideas. Best known for the invention of the mechanical pencil, Penkala held numerous patents, was the designer of the first aeroplane constructed in Croatia – which took off on its first test flight from Zagreb airport – a successful entrepreneur and an important figure in the social life of the city. In partnership with the Moster brothers he founded the writing-implement factory Penkala Edmund Moster i drug, which produced mechanical pencils and other writing implements according to his and Moster’s patents and was one of the most successful Zagreb factories of the first quarter of the 20th century. The factory building is also one of the most representative examples of the industrial architecture of Zagreb of that period, and besides the writing-implement factory it was, from 1926, also the seat of the first Croatian gramophone record and gramophone factory, Edison Bell Penkala.

The exhibition is realised on the occasion of the 120th anniversary of the mechanical pencil patent and the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Edison Bell Penkala factory. The exhibition will present objects and archival material relating to Penkala from the holdings of the Nikola Tesla Technical Museum, of other city and state museum and archival institutions, and of private collections.