Holló Szilvia Andrea: Budapest's Public Works - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2010)

Direct current versus alternating current

■ Both gas and electricity were imtalled in the maternity ward oft the Teaching Hospital, 1899

direct current was obtained from batteries with the alternating current coming from transformers.

The subsidiary of the Ganz Electric Works Co. was the first to develop its network and to begin supplying electricity to its customers in October of 1893. As the Ganz and Partner Iron Mill and Machine Factory Co. could not have purchased and fully exploited the concession of supplying electric power all by itself, it was in conjunction with the Union Bank and the Discounting Bank that the company founded an independent firm. Registered with a capital of six million korona, the Hungarian electricity Co. (MV Rt.) was managed by acting director Béla Fischer with the presence of Ottó Bláthy on the board of directors guaranteeing that professional standards were upheld. The generator plant built on a site bordered by Váci űt-Tisza utca-Visegrádi utca—Dráva utca on its four sides is now an industrial monument and the headquarters of the Budapest Electric Works (BÁV Rt.). At the commencement of power generation, the turbine house, the boiler house, the water cleaner, the workshop and the building at 72 Váci út had all been completed (later the building at 72 Váci út was extended by an additional two storeys built to plans by Emil Gerstenberg and Károly Arvé). A better known landmark is the historicist main building featuring a corner turret, which was built in 1900 to plans by the Nay and Strauss Studio for the Hungarian Workshop and Warehouse Co., a firm advertising itself in the journal Magyar Ipar (Hungarian Industry) like this: "we aim at letting about

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