Founding of 'Nikola Tesla'

The telephone devices factory “Nikola Tesla” was founded on October 31,1949. Since that day, a “service workshop for installation and maintenance of telegraph and telephone devices” that mainly dealt with the equipment repair, started to operate as a production enterprise. At that time, the factory numbered 113 employees, and was located at 83 Palmotićeva street (current location of T-HT) in Zagreb, on only 2 800 square meters. Its initial production line covered semi-automatic manual CB telephone exchanges, long distance calls operator’s consoles and test desks, manual subscriber hotel CB PBXes and various accessories (of “step by step” system).

The founding of "Nikola Tesla" Factory was the response to the ban on import of telephone equipment and devices from Eastern European countries, which was imposed due to political reasons in 1948 (Cominform). The problem needed solutions in no time, using own resources and knowledge.  The needs for telephony development in the war-torn country were enormous and the best illustration for this is the fact that at that time, in the former Yugoslavia, there was less than one telephone connection per hundred residents.