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

Direct current versus alternating current

Now the time was ripe for electric street lighting to occupy the place it deserved in Budapest, too; in the early 20th century, at a time when as many as fifty-five towns of Hungary had its networks of electric lighting installed, the country’s metropolis built on a European scale retained its system of exclusively gas-fuelled public illumination. The lighting gas company, which dominated street lighting and which now felt its monopoly threatened, applied — through its subsidiary BÁV Rt. - to the Board of Public Works for permission to install a set of experimental lights along a stretch of Rákóczi űt at the company’s expense. The Board, which was in charge of street lighting, agreed that BÁV Rt. experiment with a variety of switching combinations and light systems along the section between Múzeum körút and the People’s Theatre (in today's Blaha Lujza tér) where they could test various light effects, operational procedures and assess maintenance costs. The company now had permission to set up thirty-eight ornamental lampposts fitted with arc lights at determined spots in the shapes and sizes prescribed on the approved plans. It was even specified that the posts be fitted with baskets to hold flower pots. That was how electricity eventually made its debut in the public spaces of Budapest on 8 April 1909. The permission was valid until the end of December 1910 when the contract for gas supply expired. During that period, Rákóczi út was to be illuminated from dusk to 11 p.m., but the early lights-out hour led to several complaints claiming that the service was thus out of tune with the life of a modern metropolis. The up-to-date and aesthetically pleasant system of electric lighting became such a success that the row of lampposts was extended along Andrássy út, the Grand Boulevard and the City Park.

As the Hungarian Electricity Co. looked askance at the advances made by its competitor, they also made a bid for installing public illumination along an experimental street section with 37-volt, cascade-connected arc lights placed at a height of 9 metres on cast-iron lamp stanchions. These were switched on and off manually with every sixth post having a switchboard hidden inside it. Each cluster of lights illuminated its environment with luminosity eight times higher than that of the full moon. The company set up stanchions identical with those installed by the competitor on Lipót (today’s Szent István) körút, but they used Ganz arc lights and direct current, to forestall any attempt at the joining of the two systems. As a result of the rivalry, the boulevards of Pest from Margaret Bridge to Francis Joseph (today's Liberty) Bridge as well as Kossuth Lajos utca and Eskü (today’s Szabad sajtó) út were all provided with arc lights.

In the concession agreement signed with the private corporations the city reserved the right to provide the public with electricity, to purchase any functioning electric

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