Holló Szilvia Andrea: Budapest's Public Works - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2010)

Town gas from coal - The Óbuda Gas Works (1913-84)

Courier) warmly greeted the appearance of gas-fuelled iceboxes, which relieved housewives of having to wait till the iceman cometh, and the paper also applauded the introduction of gas-heated washing-cauldrons, which it believed would make life that much easier in the laundry.

By the thirties, almost all households in the densely populated inner-city districts had been connected to the gas-supply system. The annual consumption of town gas had exceeded ioo million cubic metres by 1938. To ensure the rational utilisation of by-products, the assembly of Budapest advised the Mayor to instruct all municipal departments and offices using central heating to order their coke from the gas works.

At the outbreak of World War II, the gas works was first declared a war factory to be consolidated with the other strategic utilities, the Budapest Capital City Waterworks and the Budapest Capital City Electric Works in 1942 (the decree ordering unification was withdrawn in 1945). As the pipe system had a combined length of more than a thousand kilometres, and the diameter of the pipes had also been increased, gas supply could be guaranteed throughout the war, even though uninterrupted service came at the cost of limiting the number of new users connected to the system.

Continuous air raids caused severe damages to the system with mains affixed to bridges completely destroyed, the high-pressure pipe outside the delivery compression unit sustaining a direct hit, and the riverside dams being rendered by aerial

■ Advanced cookery coune run by the Gas Works in the 1930s

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