Born Idek Trzmiel in Łódź, Poland, Jack Tramiel was the creator of the Commodore 64, the computer that holds a Guinness World Record for being the best-selling machine of its kind.
Have you ever seen a drone? People use them for taking photos, videotaping, or just for the simple fun of flying. But how about a drone postman or drone firefighter? Just Czech inventions.
Hungarian-American startup SignAll has been intensely working for over a decade to invent the SignAll Lab tool, which translates American Sign Language (ASL) into American English.
The Hungarian startup SEON Technologies, currently based in London, has introduced an app that determines the risk of online internet profiles. The product became very popular among companies and casual users as the world went online during the Covid-19 pandemic.
In the past, people were grateful if there was a qualified doctor in their town or village. These days, it is doctors who are grateful for 5-star reviews.
Computer games are much more than just a childish pleasure. In the case of Czechia, it is a 250-million-Euro industry making the country famous worldwide.
Have you ever seen a drone? People use them for taking photos, videotaping, or just for the simple fun of flying. But how about a drone postman or drone firefighter? Just Czech inventions.
Did you know that you are probably a proud user of the same app as Barack Obama’s barber and Beyonce’s hairstylist?
A new Slovak startup, DNA ERA, generates unique insights from DNA saliva extracts. Whereas most businesses that conduct DNA analysis offer information about family history, DNA ERA looks at hereditary diseases, physical aptitudes, optimal nutrition, and other clues stored in our DNA.
If only camping trips weren’t so challenging… Latvia’s BeTriton has a solution! Their amphibious electric vehicle allows crossing terrain and water at ease and eliminates the need to pitch a tent at night.
Koffeco, a sustainably-minded science-based startup from Latvia, sees spent coffee grounds as a resource. The team transforms organic waste into new products, contributing to a circular economy.
The Czech family-run startup Ullmanna is one of few to have developed an AI machine for agriculture. The flagship product, an intra-row weeding machine called NEWMAN, removes weeds manually faster than you can even spot them.
Eponymous with both luxury supercars and the designer of the Beetle, the most renowned democratic car of the first half of the 20th century, Ferdinand Porsche is the most important Czech-Austrian contribution to automotive history.
For the past eight years, a Polish inventor, Łukasz Koźlik, has been fulfilling his dream of building a robot that he hopes will eventually become our best housework buddy.
Born in Piaski Szlacheckie, an inconspicuous village near Lublin, Poland, Antoni Patek made his name as part of the most prestigious brand in the history of watchmaking. A true trailblazer in the industry.
His ideas have been used by the world's biggest car companies. The dashing Bulgarian inventor and entrepreneur Roumen Antonov made waves in the automotive world with his avant-garde ideas and daring technical solutions.
This anti-virus service has been leading the cybersecurity market for over 21 years – and I bet you had no idea it was a Romanian company that provided it. Bitdefender was Romania’s first ever IT start-up and the world’s leader in cybersecurity. And it all started by accident.
Scientists around the world are sounding alarm bells about the dwindling number of bees. With this in mind, Latvian startup BeeSage has created a monitoring system to give beekeepers the tools and information they need to ensure their hives can thrive.
Standing on the street corner, you see a car pass next to you on the road. With a glance, you see a winged arrow logo - a clear sign of a car manufactured by Škoda, an automotive company based in Czechia, which sells cars across the globe.
Cardiovascular diseases are the most common cause of death, according to WHO (2020). Powerful Medical, a new Slovak startup, hopes to reduce these deaths by introducing an AI-based diagnostic tool that detects cardiovascular conditions and provides recommendations tailored to patients' needs.
S.A.W.E.R. is a strange, shipping container-looking device that works miracles. What is this miracle, you ask? Well, it creates water from desert air! That's pretty miraculous; what do you say? And it gets even better: it runs on solar energy!
Innovativeness is a glamourized factor that is supposed to cure all the economic problems of the countries and the world. But do all countries need to be innovative to grow their economies?
With 240 sunny days a year, Bulgaria is well-positioned to harness the full potential of solar energy. So what is missing?
It would be an understatement to say that Polish company Creotech Instruments has been moving at light speed since its founding in 2012. The company has grown from startup to space giant in a mere decade, with plans to go public on the Warsaw Stock Exchange this summer.
Thanks to a combination of the Eastern Bloc’s economic structure, effective export deals, and last but not least, great products, Hungarian bus manufacturer Ikarus was able to dominate the Eastern Bloc’s transportation business - and even some of the West’s, too.
Czechia is known around the world for its gorgeous landscape, tasty food, and... beer(!), but a not-quite-as-obvious fact is that Czechs have been blazing trails in science for centuries. We've picked four innovative achievements with Czech origins that deserve recognition.
The RPG game “This War of Mine” about civilian life in under-siege Sarajevo was the first videogame in the world to ever make it into school curriculum.
A NASA engineer and inventor who developed heart-monitoring equipment and originated the first-ever digital wristwatch. These are just some of the accomplishments used to describe Bulgarian inventor Petar Petroff. But, before becoming one of the twentieth century's most productive inventors, Petroff led an eventful and adventurous life that few know about.
A new exhibition in Sofia is taking a closer look at six examples of post-war architecture in Bulgaria, from a kindergarten to a planned neighborhood and an airport, with the hope of providing answers and maybe, a whole new perspective.
The video game developer, famous for its series, “The Witcher," has single-handedly turned the Polish gaming industry into a high-tech powerhouse and a global tool of cultural influence.
Energy prices are rising with no sign of stopping. Economic sanctions against Russia have closed off one of the largest sources of European energy. Now begins the debate over what to do. The answer is simple, and it comes from Czechia: Small Modular Reactors.
With grocery stores overflowing with produce from the other side of the world and “all-natural” products in plastic packaging at every turn, it’s no wonder that even the savviest consumers find it hard to make sustainable choices. Austrian startup Inoqo aims to make that a little easier.
Printify has spearheaded the quickly growing print-on-demand market, helping regular people to become merchants selling unique products while avoiding storage costs and risks associated with unsold inventory.
We all know the success stories of companies that started in garages. Průša Research's story is similar to those of other multimillion-dollar companies. From humble garage beginnings in 2012 to the second-largest 3D printer manufacturer in the world.
Thanks to massive advancements in technology, distance is becoming less and less important. In April 2021, a group of doctors from Lublin became the first in Europe to bring surgery to a realm so far only imagined in science-fiction novels.
Laser beams from a small Central Eastern European country are beginning to reach the farthest corners of the world. How did Lithuania become a giant in the laser industry, and how have their lasers become such an export hit, playing a significant in their economy?
The Struve Geodetic Arc is a network of triangulation towers spanning Scandinavia to the Black Sea. They made it possible to take the first accurate measurement of a meridian arc.
It seemed that the European Bison was one of those extinct species that used to live also in Slovakia. However, it has recently been successfully reintroduced to the Poloniny National Park, which makes it one of few places in Europe where it lives in the wild today.
Veriff, the company founded in 2015 by the 27-year-old prodigy Kaarel Kotkas, provides technology that enables online identification through a simple selfie and is quickly taking over new markets.
Hungarian company Tresorit grabbed the world's attention in 2013 when it offered hackers a $50,000 prize to the person who could break the layers of defenses protecting their startup. After a year and a half, nobody had cracked the new end-to-end encryption service.
If grabbing a to-go cup of coffee at your local café is your daily ritual, you’re not alone. One company in Bulgaria wants to make that habit as sustainable as possible with their edible, biodegradable wafer cups.
Quantum physics is not the most intuitive of scientific disciplines. The group of people who can grasp its essence is quite elite and includes a large proportion of Polish scientists. Will Polish scientists trigger a long-awaited quantum revolution?
Croatia’s Višnjan Observatory is the most successful in the world when it comes to looking out for asteroids that could possibly crash into Earth.
While cars made in the Soviet Union were often mocked by westerners, communist Bulgaria had a hidden gem - an electric vehicle with far superior capabilities to similar projects developed at the time by Ford and Hitachi.
In 1937 Walter Zapp developed the Minox subminiature camera, a boon to real-life 007s across the world. His invention opened up the possibility of quickly and covertly smuggling countless thousands of pages of secret materials out from behind enemy lines.
Today, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia are the most vulnerable members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Would these countries be able to defend themselves against threats from the east?
Can consumers and businesses in Bulgaria come together and join forces in fighting food waste? Is it possible to eat delicious food, save money, and eat with a cause? The answer to all of this is yes - because FoodoBox is making it happen.
The countries of Central and Eastern Europe are the most dependent on coal-fired energy production among the countries of the European Union. How can this weakness be turned into an opportunity?
For 50 years, the Polish company Melex has been creating EVs, which sell like hot cakes all over the world - long before electric vehicles became fashionable.
At almost 650 meters tall, the radio mast in Konstantynów was the tallest structure of its time. Although it toppled in 1991, it held the record until the completion of Burj Khalifa in 2008.
By combining lessons learned from his time in Sweden and Japan, Péter Árvai returned to Hungary and took the position as CEO of what would become one of the world’s largest visual communications software companies.
2022 marks the one-hundredth anniversary of the word “robot,” brought to you by famous Czech science-fiction author Karel Čapek. However, the term, actually coined by his brother, has deep historical ties to centuries of feudal economics.
In just three years, Romanian cyber-security start-up TypingDNA took over the world and was listed by FinTechGlobal in their CyberTech100 ranking - twice. Who are they, what do they do, and how do they do it?
Creating telecommunication connections and innovative digital solutions is the key to the success of the 3 Seas Initiative (3SI) - the most important geopolitical project of our times. Latvia's rotating chairmanship of the 3SI begins in 2022. And this is a good thing.
Jaan Tallinn did not just create Kazaa and Skype; he could also save humanity from terminators.
Poland is taking steps to position Central Eastern Europe in pole position ahead of the coming competition for market shares in a new sector of the economy.
The 20th century: a time when everyone wanted to touch the sky, but few were thinking about the dangers. Apart from one whose work was centered around the question of, “How can one survive if things go wrong?”
Romania’s richest man and his company, UiPath, envision a future in which every person has a virtual robot.
The history of sugar is not as straightforward as a mere ingredient for sweetening your tea or cakes. At various points in history, it has been used as medicine, a spice, and even a symbol of both royalty and oppression. The invention of the sugar cube only adds to the story.
One of Uber’s main rivals started off modestly, but quickly turned its creator into Europe’s youngest founder of a billion-dollar company.
With the use of curved graphene, Skeleton Technologies is able to build better ultracapacitors than the world has ever seen.
The digitalization of battlefields has already become a reality. To conduct effective operations, every army needs situational awareness on both strategic and tactical levels. What if we could also monitor soldiers' medical condition in the middle of battle?
Croatian car manufacturer Rimac Automobili launched in 2009 intending to make the world’s fastest cars and has been leaving the competition in the dust ever since. The wunderkind behind the company, Mate Rimac, has no intention of slowing down now.
Cyberpunk 2077, a Triple-A class title, created by Polish company CD Project Red, has become a worldwide success with over 14 million copies sold. It’s only one of a number of titles created by companies in the 3Seas region taking the world by storm.
The number of startups-turned-unicorns from behind the former Iron Curtain is exploding.
Flying cars might seem like the stuff of dreams - or science fiction movies. However, the reality of seeing one in the skies near you is far closer that you might imagine.
The sidewalks of Tallinn bustle with people going about their daily lives. They are also full of adorable, 6-wheeled delivery robots ferrying take-out and groceries to hungry patrons. A strange sight to some, here, it's just a part of daily life.
The success of Polish eCommerce delivery provider InPost has rewritten the map for deliveries in Poland and beyond, with Automated Parcel Machines becoming the go-to choice for people who want to be able to receive packages at all times and without having to pay a fortune.
The Three Seas Initiative project will be crucial to the integration of 5G communication in the region.
In 2024, a two-year construction project for a Polish wind farm in the Baltic Sea will begin, comprising 70 turbines, which will generate over 1 GW of power. Located 22 km offshore, these new turbines will generate more power than a recently-commissioned Danish farm with 72 turbines.