Abstract
The construction of a dam brings with itself problems from the technical praxis that are described by the differential equations requiring a numerical solution. The department of the partial differential equations of the Mathematical institute CSAS treated computations of the temperature field in the dams for the duration of 3 years starting by 1953.
All these comptutations (3 million arithmetic operations) were performed by the team of people on mechanical desk calculators and initiated the general theory of numerical stability of algorithms. The main personality was Ivo Babuška, the leader of the department, the founder of the Applications of Mathematics journal and of the EQUADIFF conferences (abbreviation differential equations) organized traditionally in various cities in Czechoslovakia. We mention Ladislav Mejzlík, Milan Práger, Emil Vitásek, Jindřich Nečas, Jaroslav Kautský and Karel Rektorys among other well-known mathematicians.