Technikatörténeti szemle 24. (1999-2000)

Szabadváry Ferenc: Országos Műszaki Múzeum: előzmények, elődök, jelen és jövő

Museum of Industry's premises intended to be final began according to the designs of Alajos Hauszmann.The new building of the Royal Hungarian Technological Museum of Industry. The building was erected in the Renaissance style of the Eclectic Epoch at the corner of József boulevard and Népszínház street. The festive inauguration took place on September 15, 1889. In the following year King Francis Joseph himself visited the Museum. Soon, however, problems arose that "voluntarily" put and end to the existence of the Technological Industry Museum. In its statutes, among numerous tasks of the museum, there was one to the effect that it should promote the development of the domestic industry by material testing and experiments as wellJhe industry and the leaders of the museum interpreted this in a way that the institution could contribute to domestic development of the industry by performing such investigations. That meant chemical and mechanical investigations of objects and materials, of course, against payment. The Museum belonged to the sphere of authority of the Ministry of Religious and Educational Affairs. Its leaders, however, attained in 1896 that it be subordinated to the Ministry of Commerce. The yearly reports clearly show the ways leading leading to the "fall" of the Technological Industry Museum. In the report of the year 1897/98 we can read: "Though the parts of the collections aiming at showing the history of the various branches of industry are interesting and justified in a rich country, but hardly can an effect developing the industry be attributed to them." 1908/1909: "The collections were not increased this year by objects of museal character, the development in this direction is going to be gradually stopped.." 1913: "In its latest period the institution has nearly entirely lost its museal character and has been rather transformed into a live and emlivening institution of industrial development dealing with special training." This transformation happened, indeed,although legally and nominally in 1924 only. Then it adopted the name "Royal Hungarian Technological and Material Testing Institute".The building has been housing institutions under different names, all of them working in the field of material testing till today. The domestic technological museum was discontinued at an unreasonable hour, indeed, as the big technical museums of Europe and America, the Prague, the Vienna, the Munich museum etc., emerged exactly at the turn of the century. The fact that around Hungary, in foreign countries museums were continually founded and that Hungarian inventions were exhibited in them, too (as, e.g. Mechwart's first rolling mill, Bánki's engine, an early transformer of Bláthy and Zipernowsky, or the fast telegraph set of Pollák and Virág in the Munich museum), brought the question of the technical museum to the front again. The Minister of Commerce convened the representatives of the other ministries, the universities and the manufacturing industry. According to the suggestion of the meeting a standing commission was formed, a delegation was sent abroad for studying the museums there, and in Hungary collecting of objects was started for the Hungarian Technical