Holló Szilvia Andrea: Budapest's Public Works - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2010)
Direct current versus alternating current
tionised industry and street lighting, as its use made it possible that an entire street be illumined rather than a single arc lamp being turned on. And that was what Ganz, the Hungarian company playing a pioneering part in exploiting electricity in Hungary, proceeded to do. Later, in 1881, the company awed the public with employing 36 arc lamps to provide temporary floodlighting to mark the visit paid by the heir apparent and his bride to Budapest. Electricity thus made a successful debut on public spaces and its potentials were soon exploited in transportation, too, but the means of using electric power for interior lighting was not yet available. The problem was solved by the incandescent light bulb, an invention of Edison and Swann introduced to the public at the Paris World Exposition of 1881. The novelty was immediately tried out in Hungary, too - and where else, if not at the National Theatre! The resounding success with private customers inspired the inventors urgently to find ways of the centralised generation and distribution of electric power. One public-utility generator plant was installed after the other in the great cities of the United States and Europe, with the city of Temesvár (today's Timi oara, Romania) being the first to receive a power plant of its own (1884) even before London, Paris, Vienna and Budapest. ■ The Muieum of electrical engineering ii now homed in the Kazinczy utca tramhormer houde 30
