[1] Attending a series of schools, he studied at the College of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering of Czech Technical University in Prague (CTU), from where he graduated in 1931.
Svoboda and Dolejšek worked together[2] on several projects, including X-rays and other astronomy-related aspects, but the rapidly rising specter of what was occurring in Germany, set against the backdrop of the economic collapse during his time, made pure science difficult to pursue.
In 1936, with war looming, Svoboda quit his positions in academia and joined the CDF[clarification needed] and the Ministry of National Defense.
[2] Working there on a variety of projects, he was successful in vastly improving anti-aircraft artillery sights, capable of using predictive motion to "lead" a moving aircraft based on its direction and speed and adjusting the aim accordingly so that flak would hit.
[1] Unfortunately, by the time Svoboda had gotten settled in, Germany's Wehrmacht had started the blitzkrieg, bypassing the Maginot Line and directly threatening Paris where he was working.
Svoboda participated in experiments in the Radiation Laboratory at MIT in Boston,[3] and worked to develop a new auto-aiming targeting scope for warship anti-aircraft cannons.
Later, he conducted initial design work with other scientists such as John von Neumann, Vannevar Bush, and Claude Shannon on emerging computing elements, including ciphering.
Based on unorthodox and untried elements and designs such as electromagnetic relays and drums, its architecture was quite advanced compared to other contemporary efforts such as ENIAC.
Svoboda went on to design several other follow-on computers, but after Czechoslovakia fell more fully under Soviet domination, began to feel constrained.
Svoboda's resistance to both Nazi Germany and, later, the USSR was a reason cited[2] by many fleeing scientists during the 1960s from Czechoslovakia, who said he gave them the courage to dissent.