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this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2024
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The Czech republic has non optical microscopes only because FEI (part of Thermo Fisher Scientific) has its manufacturing plant there.
Since there are basically two manufacturers of election microscopes on earth (the other one being Zeiss) and one of these bad boys will settle you for millions of dollars, this explains how it's the country's main exports.
Before being aquire by Thermo Fisher Scientific (in 2014 or 2015, not sure) FEI's annual gross income was around $1B, so around the figure cited here.
Source: I worked at FEI when it was aquire by Thermo Fisher Scientific.
Thanks, I was wondering because nobody mentions our "dominance" in the field here... The Brno Technical Museum has an exhibition of some Czechoslovak-made electron microscopes but from what I understood, they became obsolete like much of Eastern Bloc technology.
Anyway, it's not our main export by a long shot, it's just the biggest category where we happen to be #1 by volume. Our country has relatively cheap labor and most of our exports come from assembling various mechanical devices, notably cars.
Have you been to the Czech Republic, anyway? How was it? Do you speak Czech? I see you didn't capitalize the R, which is a common mistake by Czechs because we don't have title case.
In 90's there was some investment in our production and it was saved and modernized.
Now Brno is also development and research hub for electron microscopes and non optic imaging. And it isn't only the cheap stuff that is made here - from few thousand $ simple inspection devices to multiple million $ for FAB's in Taiwan.
Our car centric economy is pain, there are loads of other things that we can be #1 or at least one of the main leaders in development... Now when car sales slows our economy tanks.