Molnár József - Szilas Péter: Night Lights - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1993)

bulbs each with a capacity of 500 watts along the city’s boulevards, but there still remained 1070 kerosene and 3000 gas lamps in operation.

As soon as the economy started to look up, modernisation, too, began to unfold. The turning point was 1925, the year which saw the introduction of so-called mid-street lighting, which consisted of a succession of lamps placed above the street, along its axis. In the first year, there were 697 such lights installed. The height and the frequency at which these lamps were to be placed were determined on the basis of exact calculations. The average distance between two lamps was set at 35 metres. The desirable 3 lux brightness could be achieved by the employment of 200 watt gas-filled bulbs.

For reasons of economy the lighting power was reduced to half its normal brightness at midnight, which meant that only one lamp remained lit in places where two were fixed to the line traversing the street. As preferably no place was to be left in complete darkness, each lamp unit contained two 100 watt bulbs, one of which was turned off at midnight. In those years every technical problem and attempt at its solution which characterizes today’s developments in the field of public lighting was actually or potentially present. These included a sufficiently bright and even lighting coupled with maximum energy efficiency.

The large number of electric street lamps necessitated the implementation of central controls, which made it possible that the lamps could be turned on and off from one location. The initiative was also supported by the Civil Defence Office, which was already considering the implementation of air-raid black-outs.

The lamps supported by brackets fixed to walls and operated by janitors were rendered obsolete by the newly developed automatic switches and timers. Initially, each timer operated a service area of 25 to 40 lamps, depending on the capacity of the lights and on a variety of factors related to the network. It was a basic requirement that public lighting should be continuously adjusted to the changes in natural light. Therefore, a uniform lighting calendar based on the times of sunrise and sundown was devised. Accordingly, the times at which all the lamps were turned on and off were set by an astronomical control dial. Built into these dials were the technological features to make the options of halfnight or all-night operation possible. The pre-programmed dial turned the system on and off in a predeter26