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

Direct current versus alternating current

■ Tungbram hab been the bebt known trade mark oh United Filament Bulbb bince tgi2

in the 1920s and employees could retire with a pension equal to their salaries at the age of forty. In their active years they also enjoyed various fringe benefits such as tenancy on the housing estate built in Hengermalom utca, free summer holiday trips for their children, and the employees’ sports club (Tromos, short for the Hungarian for electric) was the first to receive an electrically-lit pitch in the country. Although the Electric Works was the most profitable company in Budapest, it sold its services for the highest possible price, achieving turnover rates that many private firms could only dream of. It also did not refrain from discontinuing services in the homes or businesses of defaulting artisans and merchants bankrupted in the Great Depression.

To upgrade street lighting to international standards, the Budapest Capital City Electric Works set up a department of public illumination, nominating mechanical engineer Pál Szekér to be its head. Szekér started the installation of the then most- advanced system of street-centre lighting in the inner-city districts as early as the mid-twenties. The lights were provided with glass, as well as metal, lampshades in order that they shed sufficient light on the pavement as well as the road surface. The hooks at the ends of the transverse support cables were fixed to the walls where an unbroken line of multi-storey buildings flanked the street on both sides; elsewhere,

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