Molnár József - Szilas Péter: Night Lights - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1993)
for coking, only electric lights could be considered. The representatives of the capital city commissioned the Electricity Works to introduce electric lighting in the southern parts of Budapest in the shortest possible time. Regardless of instruction received from the headquarters of the “Socialised Electrical Instalments Industry” neither such major contractors as Ganz Electric Company or the Siemens-Schuckert Works nor any smaller entrepreneurs were prepared to undertake the job as their employees had been drafted into the army. However, the authorities pushed forward with the project, which was evidenced by the fact that in the autumn of 1918, some 60 smaller companies installed 2700 electric street lamps. Together with that and with the development implemented the following year, the number of electric lamps in Budapest increased to 6100. The public lights put into operation in the framework of this project constituted a temporary solution only, as the main function of these lamps was no more than to improve an untenable situation. Opting for the most feasible solution under the circumstances, the contractors mounted the lamps on the walls of buildings. In such a manner they could dispense with a network specifically developed for the purposes of public lighting, and thus they placed the lamps in locations most easily connected to the mains outlet in a neighbouring shop, flat or doorway. The 60 watt bulbs were provided with sheet iron shades and fixed to brackets made of gas pipes. The lamps were turned on and off one by one with hand switches by the lamplighters in the gas works’ employ, who were passing by in any case on their beat. There were two options available for the improvement of the outlying districts. One was the network servicing privately owned lights, the other being the posts supporting the wires used by the electric railway system. It was the posts of the community network to which the first brackets with 60, later 75 watt, bulbs were fixed. It was comparatively simple to turn these lamps on and off in groups with the switches fixed to posts. This system, in which a whole cluster of lamps could be put into operation from one central switching point, was quickly installed on the city’s outskirts. With the alternative version the lamps were fixed to posts supporting the wires of the electric railways, and thus were provided with power directly from the lines overhead. In 1923, there were 6124 lamps on the “facades of buildings”, 2400 fixed to electric railway posts, and 581 24
