Körmöczi Katalin szerk.: Historical Exhibition of the Hungarian National Museum 3 - From the End of the Turkish Wars to the Millennium - The history of Hungary in the 18th and 19th centuries (Budapest, 2001)
ROOM 14. Endurance, Compromise and Economic Boom "The Repudiation of That Which is Illegal is No Mere Option, But Rather an Obligation" (Ferenc Deák) (Katalin Körmöczi - Edit Haider)
TECHNICAL DEVELOPMENT AND INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IN HUNGARY DURING THE 19TH CENTURY The first stages in the 19th-century industrial revolution in Hungary were river regulation, development of shipping and the railways, the introduction of new technical procedures in mining and smelting, the manufacture of machines, and the creation of a milling industry. Great will, competence and modest capital brought about the transformation of the Hungarian economy, and in this an important role was played by the training of engineers. Pál Vasárhelyi (1795-1846) had been a student at the Institutum Geometricum, founded in 1782. His most important work was the regulation of the River Tisza and of the Danube at the Iron Gate on the commission of István Széchenyi, and the building of the Széchenyi road on the Lower Danube. Hungarian technical development was advanced by a whole series of discoverers and inventors. Ányos Jedlik (1800-95) was an experimental physicist. In 1829, he invented the antecedent to the electric motor, and in 1861 discovered the electric principle behind the dynamo. Lóránd Eötvös (1848-1919). A theoretical physicist and university professor. A researcher into gravitation, his discoveries in connection with accelerating free fall promoted the work of Einstein. His name was made famous by his torsion pendulum. Abraham Ganz (1814-1867) was a ironmaster of Swiss descent and a pioneer of Hungarian heavy industry. Abraham Ganz was the first in Europe to manufacture fine-quality chill-cast railway wheels instead of the wrought-iron ones made up until then. András Mechwart's (1834-1907) most important invention was the obliquelygrooved Mechwart roller-frame (1874), which made the Hungarian milling industry world famous. In 1885, Károly Zipernowsky (1853-1942) and Ottó Bláthy (1860-1939), engineers at the Ganz factory, patented the transformer they had developed, the system still used today for the transfer and distribution and energy. The modem-type, four-stroke internalcombustion engine, the joint work of Donát Bánki (1859-1922) and János Csonka (1852-1939), and their most important invention, the carburettor, were both patented. The Bánki turbine was Bánki's own work. Kálmán Kandó (1869-1931) was a pioneer of railway electrification. He was among the first to recognize the importance of electricity in transportation. József Petzval (1806-1901), an engineer and mathematician, designed the first light-intensive lens in 1840, thus beginning the development of photographic lenses. A colleague of Edison's at the beginning of the 1870s, Tivadar Puskás (1844-93) was the first man in the world to come up with the idea of a telephone exchange. His invention of telephone news, for reporting the news and other events, was firstin service in Budapest in 1893. The accelerated economic development in Hungary after 1867 caused economic links to multiply, and within the empire and in Europe generally the introduction of the easily-understood French metric system became necessary. At the proposal of the Pest Chamber of Commerce, a
