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

Direct current versus alternating current

■ Transformer house between residential buildings on Marké utca

lights and 850 incandescent bulbs. These blend in with the architecture sumptuously decorating it with their now longitudinal, now chain-like or chandelier-style arrangement. ” At the time of the millenary celebrations, the charms with which Constantinople in Budapest — an attraction opened on the southern reaches of the Danube bank—was meant to overawe the public included electric lighting: "The bridge is supplemented with 30 electrical arc lights mounted on tapering wooden constructions rising out oh the pillars. These pour blinding light into the evening twilight creating, as viewed from the end oh the bridge, a magnificent sight in combination with the also splendidly lit-up complex nearby."

Electric lighting became increasingly popular after the turn of the century when the metal-filament lamp had been introduced to replace the far less economical earlier carbon- filament bulb, this to be followed in a few years' time by the introduction, resulting from a patent of the United Incandescent, of an improved variant of the latter: the wolfram-filament light. If given the choice, better-off consumers preferred the more practical method of lighting and went electric. True, this meant no more than one in every six consumer in the capital city, but electricity was employed for the operation of lifts in multi-storey buildings. "Motors using alternating current were not initially suitable for the direct operation oh elevators, but the problem has by now been solved by Miksa Déri’s invention oh a new type oh alternating- current motor winning the Grand Prix at the World Exposition oh 1900."

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