Szczepanik's House at Chopin Street 11 Tarnów

Monuments

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ul. Chopina 11, 33-100 Tarnów Tourist region: Tarnów i okolice

From 1915, the brilliant Polish inventor, pioneer of television and colour film, Jan Szczepanik, together with his wife Wanda and the rest of his family, lived in a tenement house on Chopina Street built by his father–in–law Dr Zygmunt Dzikowski.

In 1912, the father-in-law of the great Polish inventor built a new two-storey tenement house located on the corner of Chopina and Grottgera Streets. It was designed by the well–known architect František Hackbeil the Younger, who built it in a style combining beautiful eclecticism with Viennese Art Nouveau, with an interesting corner tower topped by a dome. The monogram of the building's owner, Z.D., can be seen above the side elevation windows. Monograms also adorned the metal grille on the entrance door in the past. Whether Szczepanik was working on specific ideas here is yet to be known. During this time, he travelled extensively between Tarnów and Germany, where attempts were made to use his technical innovations. In 1926, his wife brought the gravely ill Szczepanik home from Berlin, where he died surrounded by his loved ones.

In 1972, the Society of Friends of the Tarnów Area erected a plaque dedicated to Szczepanik in the wall of the house. Unfortunately, the privately-owned building has been unoccupied and deteriorating for some time.

Jan Szczepanik had many patented inventions. His inventions significantly contributed to the development of colour photography, colour film, television, sound film, and telecommunications. He patented the bulletproof fabric, the photo sculptor, and the self-acting draught regulator. Due to his versatility, he was called the Polish Edison at the beginning of the 20th century. As early as 1899, he created colour small-format film; his discoveries in this field were later put to large-scale industrial use between the wars by Kodak and Agfa.