Technikatörténeti szemle 19. (1992)

KÖNYVISMERTETÉS - Papers of the First „MINERALKONTOR” International Conference on the History of Chemistry and Chemical Industry (Veszprém, 12-16 August, 1991)

FERENC SZABADVARY* THE HISTORY OF CHEMISTRY IN HUNGARY Hungary is a small, but ancient state. Our ancestors conquered the Danube and Tisza valleys 1100 years ago, and almost 1000 years have elapsed since our first king, St. Stephen was crowned Christmas of the year 1000 with the crown sent by pope Silvester II. made the Hungarian people settle down, christianized them and put them to farming, thereby beginning to build up a feudal state from the formerly nomadic tribes. I don't intend to relate the whole history of Hungary. We were a Kingdom till 1918, we had 52 kings, sometimes gloriouses et powerfulls sometimes unfortunates or eviles. Like the history of most European peoples our history contains glory and catastrophes, brilliant epoches and hard times We were visited by mongols and by nazis, and we had longer staynig visitors as the turks for 150 years and the Soviets for 40 years, the letters said good bye to us before two months and now we are at long last alone in our home with all our grave problems. Hungary is now a small state poor in natural resources. In olden times it was richer. In the Middle Ages, the Hungarian Kingdom was the greatest gold-mining state in Europe. Five eights of its exports were noble metals. In fact, gold was the starting point for chemistry exactly for chemical analysis in Hungary. It became necessary to regulate the exchange of gold ore into money, and this could only be done on the basis of its gold content. It is known that the fire assay of gold using lead is a method dating back to antiquity. In Hungary, mention of this method is first encountered in the decree on the delivery of gold ore passed by King Charles I in 1342: „Item statuimus ut in quibuslibet solitis locis in civitatibus debeat fieri domus regalis, ad quern omnes homines aurum et argentum ad vendendum, comburendum et cambiendum deferre teneantur. Volemus etiam ut nullus alias praeterquam in camera regia aurum quot caratorum probare debeat. Sed camerarus debeat examinare et ponere caratos super aurum et signum nostrum regium" ... that is, in all mining towns a royal house must be established where everybody is liable to take his gold and silver for examination... where its fineness in carats will be determined and stamped on it with a royal mark. Later, in the 15th century, towns were authorized to employ municipal probators (testers), as it were to check the royal probator. The first analyst known by name in Hungary was Balthazar Steckh, probator of the mining town Selmecbánya in the second half of the 15th century. Many documents from these centuries express the indignation of the royal probator against the municipal probator, •National Museum for Science and Technology, 1117 Budapest, Kaposvár u. 13-15.