Molnár József - Szilas Péter: Night Lights - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1993)
The Royal Chamber, having received his Majesty’s approval, issued a permit which stipulated the following:-that the lamps should be placed at a distance of 20 “öl” (approx 37 metres) from each other;-that the costs involved in installing the lamps should not be defrayed from the coffers of the municipality but from the proceeds of selling building sites;-that the expenses of public lighting should be covered from municipal funds from takes levied for that purpose. The rate of taxes should be adjusted to building categories depending on the category itself and on the type of area. The Chamber’s board scheduled the public lighting service to commence on 1 January, 1790. The body of magistrates commissioned the Guild of Tinsmiths to deliver and erect the lamps. The Pest city council considered the implementation of the project so important that the only person they deemed trustworthy enough to carry it out was Ferenc Lehner, an experienced lighting contractor of Vienna. Three hundred flames were lit on the first night of the year 1790, and another 63 began to brighten the nights of Pest’s Lipótváros district and its environs in 1794. That meant an advancement if we consider that not so long previously an ordinance by the city council had forbidden any rambling on the streets after the evening bell. It was thought that so long as city-dwellers abided by these regulations, they would be out of harms way and spared of being robbed or killed by highwaymen. The city could dispense with any expensive night-time lighting if it could enforce the ordinance which decreed that “whosoever is obliged to walk home at night shall carry a burning candle or lamp, without which he shall not be suffered to roam the streets in the dark.” The populace, however, did not take it kindly that the authorities wanted to substitute a virtual curfew for lighting the streets at night, and expected them to stumble around in the poor light that candles, lanterns or torches could provide. The first public lamps gradually appeared along the major thoroughfares. These were floating wicks made of tin, and they burned rape-seed oil. The flame was protected by a lamp shade the base of which was initially triangular and later four-pointed. The lamps were fastened onto walls and later to wooden posts. The light provided by these lamps was small and dim at first, so something had to be done to boost the flame. It was a clever Frenchman, a certain Leger, who 6
