Dál, výš, rychleji. Aviatika jako moderní prostředek komunikace v době zrodu republiky (1919–1923)
Further, Higher, Faster: Aviation as a Modern Means of Communication at the Time of the Birth of Czechoslovakia (1919–1923)

Summary/Abstract: Not only pilots and aerospace engineers, but also politicians and part of intelligentsia were aware of the future importance of aviation after the Great War. The defensive capacity of the country played a crucial role, but the first realistic ideas about the use of air transport, especially for airmail, appeared in 1919. The nearly futurist images of air connections, miles apart from the possibilities of the time, instigated the artist’s imagination, for example the short story of the painter Josef Šíma or the drawings of ‘future towns’ by Italian futurists and Czech caricaturists. The artists understood aviation mainly as the means of ‘fast’ social communication. In 1923, linguists agreed on using the general term aviation for everything related to flying. It was the notional dot after the first concepts of the air transport in Czechoslovakia. Inevitably, all of these efforts were later reflected in popular pictures, especially in advertising. Airplanes were also used for advertising, either by the industrial enterprises Schicht, Baťa, and Poldina huť or by the aircraft producers and carriers. At that time, the crucial study of Vlastimil Fiala titled Náš vzduch, naše moře (Our Air, Our Sea) was published which later developed in the motto ‘Air Is Our Sea’.

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