Kaján Imre szerk.: Vásárhelyi Pál és a reformkori mérnökgeneráció (Budapest, 1995)

Bartha Lajos: A reformkor felmérési műszerei 47

mit Abbildungen von Meßgeräten der damaligen Zeit. Diese geben uns wertvolle Informationen über die von den Kartographen des 19. Jahrhunderts verwendeten Meßgeräte. LAJOS BARTHA SURVEY DEVICES OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY REFORM PERIOD In the first half of the nineteenth century the Hungarian hydrographical survey studies and the cartographical discipline in general have seen a rapid development. A minute and detailed cartographical-hydrographical survey involved not only a basic theoretical and practical training of the engineers, but also good instruments, representing the highest quality of the period. The development of the survey in the decades of the Hungarian Reform Period (between 1820 and 1850) coincides with a sound improvement of engineering devices and the evolution of the European precision-mechanics. Until the beginning of the nineteenth century, the most important device of high precision mensuration (astrogeodetic survey) and triangulations was the quadrant and the 'circumferentor' (engineering astrolabium) for survey of the azimuth and the altitude angles. The basic instruments for detailed survey of an area were the surveyor's table, the aiming sight rule, the range and the magnetic compass. Until the end of the eighteenth century, England has remained the centre of high precision industry (shops of Ramsden, Dollond, Sisson, and Troughton). Even the astronomical and geodetical instruments of the Hungarian observatories, having been established in the second half of the eighteenth century, came from English shops. In the Continent, only the shops of Brander of Augsburg and Lenoire of Paris have become well-known. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the shops of Fraunhofer and Reichenbach of Munich have undergone a major improvement in the optical and high-precision industry. After the products of the Utzschneider-Reichenbach-Liebherr-Fraunhofer firm, other German and Austrian shops also introduced new technology and new types of instruments. From a Hungarian perspective, the shops of the Viennese Christof Starke and his son Gustav Starke, the optical achievements of Simon Plössl, the Voigtläder family and Edmund Kraft were of a special importance. Because of an ever-increasing demand for instruments, even Hungarian technicians have developed some simple survey devices. At the end of the eighteenth century the Jesuit Thomas Rössel, technician of the Nagyszombat then Pest-Buda University, has produced engineering instruments. In the first half of the nineteenth century I. Steifen and Antal Ferenc Nuss have developed measuring apparatuses of excellent quality. The most important of all must have been the shop of the Haurant family where certain instruments were made in standardized production. Unfortunately these shops have ceased to operate after the fall of the Hungarian Liberation War. In the first decades of the nineteenth century quadrants and the circumferentors were substituted by the modern theodolite, the scaled level, and the optical square, later the square prism. The surveyor's table has become easier and more practical. The use of the surveyor's table (even basic levelling projects) were introduced at secondary schools of higher standard. Very few of the instruments of the one-time Hungarian engineers have survived. We can see, however, from the sample pieces (some of them coming from the collection of the Institute of Engineering of the Royal University), that they were of the highest quality of their time. We can also discover devices used by cartographers on the ornaments of maps. These drawings supply us with interesting information about the instruments used by hydro- and cartographical engineers of Hungary in the nineteenth century. 51