Molnár József - Szilas Péter: Night Lights - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1993)
provided the solution by inventing the flat lampwick. In place of the old-fashioned wick, now it was a flat one which soaked up the fuel, resulting in a flame far brighter than what the floating wick had been able to produce. This development, in turn, was supplanted by the so- called Argand lamp, another ingenious invention by a Frenchman, the essence of which was the use of a tubular wick. This tube brought air to the lamp’s core, which increased the brightness through enlarging the flame. The Argand lamp, which for all practical purposes revolutionized the technology of lighting, was first used-perhaps not by accident-in 1789, the year the French Revolution broke out. News of the innovative lamp reached the Hungarian capital, and by 1830 thirty- seven Argand lamps had been installed in the streets of Budapest. Together with these there were 1378 public lights in operation at the time. Operating costs with the lamps containing the tubular wick, however, were five times the amount spent on traditional lights. And the public lighting of the period was still less than satisfactory as far as the burghers were concerned. They had little reason to be pleased when seeing, for example, that the actors of the National Theatre had to light their way home with two candles each after appearing in the evening performance. Though lamps multiplied, and expenses were running higher and higher, there was still plenty to complain about. Eventually, the city council of Pest invited tenders for the lease of the night-time lighting of the streets. It was a man named Vilmos Tekusch who undertook to provide lighting every night, except for the seven moonlit nights every month, from April to the end of September. The municipality thereupon handed over all the lamps to the leaseholder stipulating that he was to pay a fine if he failed to light the lamps or turned them off ahead of time. After a period of persistent experimentation, the municipal authorities of London managed to install public gas lighting for the first time ever in 1807. In 1816, the curator of Pest’s National Museum, Lajos Tehel, lit, to the amazement of scientists, the first gas light in Hungary. Shortly thereafter, a Pest banker purchased his own “gas distillery” to provide fuel for a gas light on the wall of his house. The fad caught on, and at the beginning of 1837 the sensational news was released that the National Theatre was producing lighting gas in its own kitchen. Later on, however, all domestic gas production was banned, and gas was distributed in large leather bags by the gas factory established in 10
