Holló Szilvia Andrea: Budapest's Public Works - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2010)
From gashouse to natural gas mains
in June of 1816, his gas light affixed to the Batthyány Villa housing the natural history collection of the museum, of which he was guardian (the building stood on the lot of today's National Museum). "A large crowd gathered to admire the ipectacle, which was the hint, and fully successful fint, of its kind in thii country. ” is how some enthusiastic eyewitnesses remembered the event. A decade later banker Frigyes Kappel had his residence lit by gas on Bálvány (today's Október 6) utca, and a lamppost was set up in the street, too, even though the illuminating gas was derived from rapeseed oil rather than coal. Several wholesalers living in Pest followed the example set by Kappel, and, what is more, the newly opened National Theatre had its own gas generator installed in yet another decade. It was from the theatre that the popular Pilvax Café purchased its illuminating gas, too. Gas lighting impacted more of the five senses than one at the time, as it emitted certain peculiar smells as well as light. Writer Mór Jókai did not mind that too much: "Thii gai has a rather putrid odour iomewhat reminiicent of iauerkraut but in our patriotic pride we were more than willing to put up with the imell." From the time they were first lit on 9 March 1838, the theatre's gas lights were supervised by actor István Balogh for 15 years. Encouraged by these initiatives, the city aldermen invited tenders in 1839 for the most advantageous offer to operate a cheap system of municipal lighting and the erection of the first Pest gas works to supply fuel for the network. Until that time there had only been private generators in operation offering for sale no more than the surplus amounts obtained from their small units. The enthusiastic magistrates’ steps taken in that direction were encouraged by András Fáy, the founding member of Pest’s banking institutions. Fáy greeted the initiatives with these words: ”Pe&t ii moving ahead by leapi and boundi getting clo&er and cloier to Vienna every year." The city magistrates signed a contract with the gas company of Boroszló (today's Wroclaw, Poland) in 1846, but in the upheavals of the War of Independence the erection of a gas works was the least of everybody’s worries, and it was only after the cessation of hostilities that the still-valid agreement was put back on the agenda. Allocating a plot for the factory was such a contentious issue that tenders had to be invited. Applicants there were aplenty: as the manufacture of gas had turned out to be a great success abroad, the idea aroused the interest of several entrepreneurs. "Gas lighting wa& a topic talked about daily. We have recently reported that an offer promising more benefits than any previous bid has been made by a group of Nuremberg industrialists. - The magistrate has responded by instructing the local authorities of Pest to make inquiries of the Wodidner Wholesale Company whether 10
