Urbs - Magyar Várostörténeti Évkönyv 9. (Budapest, 2014)
Abstracts
330 Abstracts BORBÁLA FÁBIÁN Norm of Public Lighting: The Street Lighting as a Social Expectation in the 19th Century Hungarian Cities The norm of public lighting emerged relatively late. The public security was ensured through forbidding the walk in the streets without lantern at night. As a social expectation the norm appeared first in the reform era when the street lighting became fashionable. Not only public security matters but the transformation of the night life as well induced this change. In several places a casino or a lamp-association initiated the introduction of the public lighting. The technical development of the public lighting (the means used for this purpose) and the social expectations of the citizens changed almost in every decade what were considered as a good lighting. The calendar lighting meant that at the full moon the lamps were not lit. Although it became obsolete at the turn of the century, in the most of the cities it was implemented in case of the petroleum lighting. The applications for lamps reflect well the claims of the citizens about the public lighting. The municipal leaders and the engineering bodies considered the most of the reasons expressed about issue “let there be light” when they made decision concerned with the introduction or extension of the public lighting. These considerations were: the location of the given street (situated in downtown), the residents lived there. Furthermore it was examined as well that the street was cobbled or not. In many cases the budget and economic conditions of the city blocked the acceptance of every application. The street lights were the victims of transgression at nights in the city, because thieves or shrewd drunks broke or extinguished them. The stealing of the public light happened in Zombor in the late 19th century as a result of the petroleum was poured from the lamp. It was rare that someone struggled with lighting the lamps, there was no order created for this kind of trespass. The public lighting is one of the criteria and symbols of emergence of the modem city. This was how the visitors who arrived to the city at night could categorize the given place, thus the public lighting was among the travellers’ expectations. The introduction of modem types of lighting (gas, electro) could represent the rank of a city; moreover it could improve the opinions about the given place. For instance by introducing the public lighting Vecsemye or Zombor hit the standards of the big cities. The technical conditions of the early 20th century made the public lighting available for every citizen in the most of the cities’ territories. In 1910 only one borough had no public lighting.
