Technikatörténeti szemle 24. (1999-2000)

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

Museum to be established.From 1911 on a yearly sum was granted for the planned museum from a credit supporting the industry. Then came World War I and the post-war period, and the whole problem of the technical museum was dropped. There were some, however, who did not put aside the whole matter and believed that, after all, the Hungarian Technical Museum would come into being. Particularly the name of the civil engineer Ede Lósy-Schmidt has to be mentioned. He was librarianin-chief of the Association of Engineers and Architects and fought indefatigably for a technical museum, moreover, he passionately collected the objects that could be considered for it. It was upon his incentive that the engineering associations and the manufacturing industry started again urging the cause of a Hungarian technical museum, this time with success. The Hungarian Government charged Ede LósySchmidt to look for a possible place for the planned museum. Lósy found one quickly on the 3rd floor of the management building of the Southern Railways that had merged with MÁV (Hungarian State Railways) in 1932. The building was located in Mészáros street. On March 6, 1935 the Hungarian Broadcasting Corporation announced the opening of the Hungarian Technical Museum. In the course of the years to follow the collection of the museum as well as the number of its visitors steadily increased. However, in 1939 Hungarian State Railways claimed its building again. The then Minister of Commerce decided that the museum should move to Kassa, a town recently reannexed to Hungary.This happened in that very year. The objects of the museum were transported to Kassa in 13 closed railway carriages of 15 tons each. The material of the collection remained unpacked for nearly 18 months in the building of the former Tchech inland revenue office and got from there to one of the railway buildings in October 1940. On November 11, 1943 the Hungarian Technical Museum was solemnly inaugurated in the presence of the Hungarian Government and some representatives of authority of the society of the times. From autumn 1944 on Kassa, together with the technical museum, belonged to Tchechoslovakia again! Again Hungary remained without technical museum, as was the case several times during the past 150 years. And its lack made itself felt soon in practice, too. Technical development considerably accelerated all over the world, and also in our country. New, modern machines, instruments etc. appeared. However, the old ones also stood there everywhere! The slogan "Collect iron and metals" prompted people to bring old equipment to the blast furnaces. Among them many devices of value for the history of technology. Finally, in 1954 the Presidential Council issued a law-decree on protection and tracing of technical monuments. In order to solve amd fulfil the tasks a Group for Registering and Collecting Technical Monuments was brought into being within the frame of the Cultural Division of the Ministry for Cultural Affairs. Its task was to search for important technical monuments, register them and ensure their protection.In 1963 a general rule dealt with the protection and declaration of museal relics, among them of industrial monuments. These were defined by the rule as follows:"... objects of technical character (establishments, equipment, constructive works, machines,constructions, apparatuses, tools, instruments, experimental tools,