Technikatörténeti szemle 18. (1990-1991)

TANULMÁNYOK - Trudeau, Terence: The Work and Life of John Csonka

insisting that they participate in it and do it weh. His position at the University gave him the opportunity to be active in several fields. He began by designing and building a gas engine to drive the machinery in his shop. Nobody before him buüt such an engine in Hungary nor in Eastern Europe, for that matter. His gas driven engine was completed in 1879. Subsequently, he designed a gas and kerosene engine, for which he was awarded a pantent in January 1883. One of his students, Donát Bánki was fascinated by his engine, and studied it in great detail. After his university studies, Bánki became an engineer at the largest machine factory in Hungary, Ganz and Company in Budapest. The Ganz-Mavag bulletin in May 1961 commented on the 100th birthday of Bánki as folows: "The first Hungarian made gas engine was designed by János Csonka in 1883. It was constructed in response to the energy demand of the machine shop at the Technical University, and it was operated there until 1888 without any breakdowns. The four-stroke 3 HP engine with valve control, could be operated either with illuminating gas, or with petroleum (kerosene) by simply shifting one pin. Recent publications refer to it as "the best constructed among four-stroke engines which apart from the Daimler type engine, came nearest to the form of the internal combustion engines as it was developed later." As

. a student, Bánki made friends with János (John) Csonka. Csonka worked then as the head of the machine shop of the Technical University . . . After extensive experiment, first at the plant of the Works and later in the instruction shop of the Technical University, in 1889 they finished then fust jointly constructed gas engine, which was protected by various patents. The engines . . . were put on the market with the name "Ganz Engine" but it was indicated on the engine switchboard that they were manufactured according to the BánkiCsonka patent." "These engines of the Ganz Works were the first engines manufactured by Hungarian industry . . . The cooperation of these two men was to play a prominent role in the development of Hungarian engine production and the technical sciences." Early in then careers, Bánki and Csonka concentrated then efforts on various ways to use petroleum (kerosene) as engine fuel. They were motivated by the knowledge that this liquid could be made available in the countryside to people living on small farms. Already in the eighteen eighties they constructed a vertically arranged petroleum engine, in which the difficult problem of vaporizing the fuel was solveld by a surface evaporator preheated by exhaust gases from the engine. "After a study of the Robson type gas hammer, Bánki and Csonka created then own machine, driven by petroleum: the Bánki-Csonka petroleum hammer. It was better than the Robson hammer, the engine integrated with the hammer was also capable of driving a transmission. The first model was completed in 1888, and for 22 years it was in operation in the machine shop of the Technical University in Budapest. These hammers ranged from 2 HP to 10 HP, they were manufactured for several decades by the Ganz Works in Budapest and also in Germany, protected by both Hungarian and German patens. These machines were displayed at the Genova and Berlin exhibitions in 1896."