The Technical University of Košice was founded in 1952, but its roots must be sought much deeper in the past. As early as 1657 the Universitas Cassoviensis was established in Košice, but technical education in Slovakia was only elevated to higher - education level in 1762, when the Austro-Hungarian monarch Maria Theresa established the Mining Academy in Banská Štiavnica. This provided education and promoted research activity in a group of scientific disciplines ranging from ore mining through to production and processing of metal materials. The true birth of the Košice Technical College came on 8th July 1952, when the Czechoslovak Government issued Directive No.30/1952 Statutes setting up three faculties, namely the Faculties of Heavy Engineering, Mining and Metallurgy. These were joined in 1969 by the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and in 1978 by the Faculty of Civil Engineering. The important event of the renaming of the College into the Technical University of Košice occurred on 13th February 1991. In 1992 the Faculty of Professional Studies was set up in Prešov, which was transformed in 1996 into today’s Faculty of Manufacturing Technologies. The year 1992 also saw the introduction of the Faculty of Economics, which meant that the University outgrew its original framework of purely technical disciplines, and it continued in this trend in 1998 with the founding of the present-day Faculty of Arts. The Faculty of Aeronautics of the Technical University of Košice was established on 1st January 2005 as a successor of the Air Force Academy of Milan Rastislav Štefánik in Košice, which has been a prestigious educational institution in Europe and in the world providing university education for pilots and air operating personnel for over 30 years.