Technikatörténeti szemle 1. (1962)

KÖZLEMÉNYEK - Csillag Miklós - Mészáros Vince: A londoni Science Museum hajómodellje és az Óbudai Hajógyár

The attention of the collaborators of the Hungarian Communication Museum was called to the model by Mr. G.B.Wilson, Science Museum of London who was also kind enough to send descriptions and photos of the exhibit.

The model of such steamer, built so early by the Óbuda Shipyard was looked upon as an important potential source to add to our scope of knowledge in the field of the history of technics the more so because no realiable illustration of the crafts used on the Danube in that age has been available until now. The authors havetried, therefore, to establish with careful work which make of the Óbuda Shipyard was represented by the said model.

In the course of this work they found that the close business relations in the first decades of the Danube shipping service and of the Óbuda Shipyard with England were rendering good reasons to assume that the model was sent to England between 1840 and 1850 but the datas of the model could not be identified with any of the ships built by the Óbuda Shipyard in that age. No ship of the same dimensions was found among the later constructions either. There are certain indications that the Óbuda Shipyard sent a fine model of the S.S. Széchenyi to the 1862 World Industrial Exhibition but on the basis of the data received this could not be identified ei ther with the model of the Science Museum of London. To make the origin ot the model clear it would be nevessary to check its data and take its measures with high accuracy again because a slight inexactitude in the dimensions or the scales might lead to utterly differing results.

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