Great Hungarians in Transport

Hungarians in the History of Transport
From Coaches to the Underground
The Hungarian Coach Drawing by Jeremias Schemel from 1568
Another major Hungarian contribution to
the
convenience
of
medieval
transportation was the invention of the
hintó or landau (barouche in French).
This new type of vehicle, the Hungarian
hintó soon became very popular all over
Europe. In the 17th century the wooden
stays were replaced with forged steel
springs, but the original suspending
mechanism has remained unchanged up
to now.
Few people know that the first four-wheel
sprung carriage was crafted in Kócs, a
small village in Komárom county at the
turn of the 14th century. Unlike the usual
carts of that time, this carriage was
suspended on vertical straps and later on
springs. The Hungarian word for the
carriage kocsi from the name of the
village Kócs, has spread all over the world
and been adopted by many languages
such as English (coach), German
(Kutsche) or French (coche).
A coach-and-four or barouche on a 18th century litography
One of the Hungarian coach-makers
ventured out to unknown terrains. In
1876, György Wessely patented his
„Colonet”, a vehicle „which can be driven
without horses”. The bizarre structure
was classified as military secret by the
Austro-Hungarian authorities.
Dezső Korda designed an electric
automobile in the 1860s when he worked
with the Paris-based Societé de Fives-Lille as chief designer and, later, as the
company’s managing director. He is also renowned as the inventor of the rotating
condenser. He received the Légion d’Honneur, the French Order of Honour for his
scientific achievements.
Another Hungarian first was the construction of the European continent’s first tunnel
tramway, built in Budapest between 1894 and 1896. Originally a “normal” tramway was
designed to run along Andrássy út, one of the capital’s thoroughfares, but the city
authorities afraid that the noise of the tramway would disturb the squeamish public of the
elegant, two-kilometer-long boulevard, insisted on building the tramway below the street.
This is how one of the most up-to-date transport systems of the late 19th century was
conceived. Designed by the Hungarian subsidiary of „Siemens und Halske”, the
Underground opened in 1896.
In the field of water transport Tódor Batthyany (1792-1812), a versatile, technically
educated entrepreneur worked out unique plans to make the rivers Dráva and Száva
navigable. With brave initiative, he set up a ship-carpentry at the Pozsony branch of the
Danube which came close to the size of a shipyard. An enthusiastic forerunner of shipbuilding, Batthyány obtained a patent for his ship the Bucentero and established the
New Royal Patented Shipbuilding and Shipping Company to manufacture it. The new
ship was introduced to the public in the Brigittenau of Vienna in 1797 September. The
ship was moved by wheel blades driven by a geared horse engine. This was placed
inside the ship which was steered by four long sculls at the prow and the poop.
Stephen Marius Balzer (1864?-1940) was a
Hungarian immigrant who arrived in New York in the
1870s. An active inventor, with a number of patents to
his credit, Balzer later set up his own machine shop. He
built his first car in 1894, today exhibited at the
Smithsonian Institute.
In November 1898, he was commissioned to build an
engine for Langley’s experiments with heavier-than-air
flight. Langley's assistant, Charles M. Manly, heavily
modified Balzer's engine, turning it into a radial engine
and improving its performance. The National Air and Space Museum now acknowledges
Balzer's contributions to the engine and calls it the Balzer-Manly engine.
Antal Bernhard (19th century) was an inventor in
Pécs who designed and built the first steamship
on the Danube. Only a decade after the
introduction of Fulton´s steamship, Bernhard
designed his own which made her maiden voyage
in March, 1817. His next ship the Carolina
travelled the distance between Vienna and
Pozsony (today Bratislava, Slovakia) in three
hours. Bernhard also invented a pneumatic engine
patented in 1824-25 with which he intended to
replace the steam engine.
In electric traction Gyula Fischer (1873-1954) deserves mention. Fischer´s current
collector (“harp”), patented in 1922-27, is still in use in several countries. The new
collector applied a steel plate instead of the aluminium plate used earlier and an original
mechanism which ensured the optimal current collection and moderate abrasion, thus
keeping maintenance costs low. Professional publications both in Hungary and in foreign
countries give much credit and recognition to the “Fischer-plate” current collector.
In the development of aviation many
Hungarians earned recognition. Lajos Martin
(1827-1898) a professor of mathematics at
the University of Kolozsvár (today Cluj,
Romania) concentrated his studies on
artillery rockets. He came up with the idea
that the airscrew might be suitable to propel
flying structures. Well ahead of others, Martin
recognised the correlation between the
elevation angle and the tractive force. He suggested that
aileron areas should be used on aircraft wings and that aircraft
moved to one or another side by changing the angle of
intersection of these aileron areas in the opposite direction. He
clearly envisaged the proper way of developing dynamic flight
and pointed out many times that the simple imitation of bird
flight would lead to serious mistakes.
Nemethy’s design of an aileron
Martin’s floating wheel
Emil Némethy (1867-1943) was one of the pioneers of
Hungarian aviation. He prepared his first, dragon-like
aeroplane in 1900. Without an appropriate engine this
never flew, but it helped its inventor to develop two
important aviation theories; the one on dynamic flight
was published in a 1903 book. The “Némethy-equation”
was one of the first mathematical solutions to calculate
with great precision the mass-lifting ability of early
aeroplanes. Némethy was the first in the world to use
steel tubes for aeroplanes and to apply aileron areas.
János Sklenár (1884-1954) invented one of the most efficient
combustion engines, the ball-piston radial engine. He started to
develop combustion engines during World War I and by 1925 he had
managed to increase power efficiency by 80 to 85 percent. He
worked in German, Sweden and France where his achievements
were also acknowledged by the French Academy of Science. At the
outbreak of World War II he returned to Hungary. As he refused
offers to use his inventions for military purposes he was able to
restart the engine’s development only in the early fifties, shortly
before his death in 1954.
Engineer Sándor Svachulay (1875-1955) was
another pioneer in Hungarian aviation. His
aeroplane built with welded steel tubes in 1909
was a forerunner of the modern skeletonstructured aero-planes. For the aeroplane
Albatros, Svachulay designed a retractable
ground gear, which was adapted by several
foreign designers later. His other inventions
included the adjustable metal propeller and a
device to control landing speed.
János Adorján (1882-1964) was the designer and
builder of Hungary’s first workable aeroplane. His twocylinder plane „Libelle” made several successful
voyages in 1909-1910. Later he worked as a vehicle
engineer and, after World War II, took part in the
development of Hungary’s flaship coach brand „Ikarus”.
Coin issued by the Hungarian
National Bank to commemorate the
125th anniversary of Adorján’s birth
Aladár Zsélyi (1883-1914) graduated of
mechanical engineering and soon turned to
aircraft development. He was the first in
Hungary who designed and built and aeroplane
entirely based on structural engineering
fundamentals. It included several new concepts
including a new control mechanism and a
spring supported landing gear. Recognising the
shortcomings of cylinder-type gasoline for aircrafts, Zsélyi experimented with gas turbines.
Zsélyi in his plane’s cockpit
These experiments have preceded the
development of practical gas turbines by some 25 years when high strength materials
became available for this application. In 1914 he broke his arm in a landing accident
and, as a result, he died of tetanus.
The gyroscopic stasbilizer
Tódor Kármán (1881-1949) born in Budapest is
considered a leading theoretician of aerodynamics. His
curiosity to the physical principles of flying machines led
to his lifetime involvement in aerodynamics. He
accepted a position in the fall of 1908 as laboratory
assistant at the University of Göttingen, where an
airship wind tunnel was under construction for the
Zeppelin Company. Kármán analyzed the flow of fluid
past a cylindrical obstacle at right angle and determined
that the wake separated into two rows that create
vibrations, as in aircraft wing flutter and a bridge in high wind. The concept, presented by
him in several papers in 1911 and 1912, came to be called Kármán vortex street or
Kármán vortices. It led to the redesign of many structures to withstand oscillations and to
modifications in the design of ships and aircraft to a streamlined shape.
Apprehensive about developments in Europe, in 1930
he accepted the directorship
of the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at the
California Institute of Technology (GALCIT) and emigrated to the United States.
Kármán's fame was in the
use of mathematical tools to
study fluid flow, and the
Animation of the phenomenon von Kármán vortex street
interpretation of those results
to guide practical designs.
He was instrumental in recognizing the importance of the swept-back wings that are
ubiquitous in modern jet aircraft. His theory on aerodynamic bumps served as a basis for
the development of supersonic aircraft.
Pál Vágó (1889 - ?) also played an important role in
aviation technology. In 1912 he invented and
developed the gyroscopic stabilizer, a forerunner of
modern gyroscopic artificial horizons. The Dedics
brothers, Ferenc (1874-1929) and Kálmán (18771969) were pioneers of Hungarian aero-engine
manufacture from 1909. Kálmán studied in Germany.
He built the first aeroplane engines between 1909-13,
when the manufacture of planes was still in its infancy everywhere. He was the first to
apply the 6-cylinder radial-engine which caused a sensation in 1911, as it produced 44
kW output with a mere 62 kg (137 lbs) mass. Later, the brothers switched to the
production of 7-cylinder rotary engines.
In the first decades of modern aviation
history, aeroplane designers seeking
for new flying techniques probed many
different solutions; along with the rigidwing “dragon” or the orni-thopter, they
also experimented with propellers
rotating around a vertical shaft. During
World War I, Lieutenant-colonel István
Petróczy, professor Tódor Kármán and
Vilmos Zurovetz jointly made hovering
experiments with a windmill plane, the
PKZ. Oszkár Asbóth (1891-1960) did
military service at an aircraft factory
Asboth’s AH4 helicopter during a demonstration flight
near Vienna after the outbreak of
World War I, where he was in charge
of propeller manufacturing. He constructed and tested some 1500 propellers in the wind
channel of the factory. Ten years later Asbóth built his first helicopter. Powered by a 120
HP nine-cylinder engine and propelled by two wooden propellers, each 4.35 meter in
diameter, placed parallel above each other and rotating in opposite direction, the model
“AH 1” took off vertically on September 9, 1928. For its maiden flight, after 1100
rotations the plane swiftly took off, at ten meters stopped, hovered for some ten minutes,
than smoothly descended.
Dávid Schwartz (1845-1897), the
Hungarian inventor of dirigible
airship was a wood trader.
Schwartz studied the airship and
came up with a novel idea. With the
very thin aluminium he used for
insulating
the
balloon,
the
aluminium
skeleton
and
the
propellers at the sides of the basket
he set the course for the airship´s
future development.
Commissioned by the German
army, he had constructed the first
dirigible airship in 1896, which was tested with partial success at Tempelhof near Berlin,
Germany, on November 3, 1897. The propeller belts broke, causing the pilot to lose
control and crash the airship. Schwarz died shortly afterwards, before further testing was
conducted, supposedly as a result of a heart attack which is attributed to the excitement
of receiving a telegram from the German government informing him that his invention
has been accepted. The widow of Dávid Schwartz who lived in great poverty after his
death, sold all patent rights to Graf Zeppelin in 1898. Zeppelin went on to develop a
successful line of dirigible airships which bore his name, while that Schwartz’s sank
into oblivion.
Albert Fonó (1881-1972), a Budapest-born mechanical engineer
received his diploma in 1903 at the Budapest Technical University. His
main professional interest was energetics, though his theoretical work
was extensive. After gaining experience at German, Belgian, Swiss and
French factories, he obtained his degree of Ph. D. in the technical field.
His first invention was an aerial torpedo in 1915, which operated on the
jet propulsion principle. This invention increased the effective range of
artillery. It was a significant invention but failed to attract interest.
Miklós Hoff (1906 – 1997) Nicholas J. Hoff, professor
emeritus of aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford
University helped devise and develop the fragile aluminum
skins of ever-faster aircraft from the 1940's into the
supersonic age. Born in a small town in western Hungary,
Hoff was eight when his family moved to Budapest, where he
graduated from the Technical University. Having earned an
engineering diploma at the Polytechnic Institute in Zurich,
studying thermodynamics and steam-engine design, Hoff
obtained a position with the only Hungarian airplane
company at the time, the Manfred Weiss Aeroplane and
Motor Works of Budapest, where he spent the next 10 years
designing training planes and fighters for the clandestine
Hungarian air force. From 1939 he studied in Stanford and
received his doctoral degree in 1942. The war in Europe kept him from returning to
Hungary as he had intended. He spent the years from 1940 to 1957 at the Polytechnic
Institute of Brooklyn, rising to professor of aeronautics and head of the department of
aeronautics and applied mechanics. He began exploring both theoretically and
experimentally the stability problems of a new type of aircraft construction technique:
reinforced aluminum monocoque. Hoff also investigated the effects that supersonic
heating had on the stability of aircraft wings and fuselages. In 1965 he published a
famous textbook on the subject titled "The Analysis of Structures."
Donát Bánki (1859-1922) was born in the village of Bánk, in
the county of Veszprém. He took his degree in architecture at
the Budapest Technical University, where he later lectured
between 1899 and 1922.
Bánki and János Csonka were co-founders of engine
manufacturing in Hungary. As proven by their joint patents,
their cooperation met with considerable success, particularly
in the training workshop of the University. They patented for
the petrol engine in 1888 and the carburettor in 1893. The
Bánki - Csonka motors were mass produced by the Ganz &
Partner Iron Foundry and Engineering Works, where Donát
Bánki had worked for 16 years between 1882 and 1899, first
as a designer, then as chief engineer. During this period he
The Bánki engine
started to develop his own inventions. In 1894 he patented his high-pressure combustion
engine and upgraded it with injected water cooling. This was followed by the front wheel
drive car in 1902, the steam turbine in 1903 and the crossflow water turbine in 1917 this
latter still recommended by the UN for use in developing countries. Between 1891 and
1919 he worked as an assessor of the Patent Council. In 1911 he was elected
corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
Szeged-born János Csonka (1852-1939)
was one of the most prominent figures in
the history of Hungarian technology. Selftaught in many areas, he spoke Latin,
German and French well. Csonka
constructed the first Hungarian gas motor
in 1879 with tools and equipment devised
by himself. In 1882 he built the a blended
fuel gas and petroleum motor. Csonka
could boast of the ownership of many
original inventions. He designed various
Csonka and his „Csonka 1904” model
measuring devices, a motor tricycle and in
1905 a transport vehicle for the Post Office as well. The latter marked the birth of the
Hungarian car manufacturing. He became a pensioner at the age of 73 and filed his last
patent application when he was 84 years old. The Institute of Engineers highly valued
his life's work and in 1924 authorized him to use the title of mechanical engineer.
Until 1893, there had been many problems with the
ignition of petrol engines due to uneven mixing of
gases: the device, used to vaporise petrol and mix it
with the air, could not produce the precise mixing
proportions. The carburettor patented by Bánki and
Csonka in 1893 and displayed at the Paris World Fair
in 1900, immediately eliminated these problems. Bánki
and Csonka suggested that the fuel should be
atomised into small particles and mixed with air in the
right proportion before feeding it into the combustion
engine. Theirs was the first carburettor in the world,
nevertheless the credit is often given to the German
engineer Wilhelm Maybach, whose patent was,
however, submitted only half a year later.
In 1898 Bánki and Csonka split. Bánki focused
his research on improving his other invention, waterinjection engines, while Csonka concentrated on
automobiles.
In 1904, the Hungarian Post Office announced
The Banki-Donat carburettor
an international tender for the purchase of 8 mail vans.
The tender was won by Csonka´s original, fourcylinder car, which started its 8-day, 2000-kilometre trial run on May 31, 1905. This date
is considered the birth of Hungarian automobile manufacturing.
A journalist, office clerk, sculptor, and painter in Budapest, later the world-famous
inventor of the ball-pen, József László Bíró (1899-1985) bought a red Bugatti car one
day. He found the clutch mechanism too clumsy and began to muse about an automatic
solution. After one year of experiments, he made and patented his “automatic gear-box”.
For its mass production Bíró did not have enough capital and decided to sell the patent.
The German subsidiary of General Motors requested him to introduce the patent in
Berlin. To prove his invention’s reliability, Bíró installed it on his own 350-CC
combination motor bicycle, had its gear box sealed by the Automobile Club and with a
passenger in the side car drove 1000 kilometres to Berlin, over hill and dale, without any
fault. In Berlin he made four successful test drive. GM´s draft contract offered him half
percent of the price of each unit sold and a monthly USD 200 advance for five years.
This latter secured him an easy life for a while, but the licence fee was never paid, as,
for commercial reasons, the American company suppressed the patent and sank it to
the bottom of a filing cabinet.
Jenő Fejes (1877-1952) an undeservedly
forgotten designer, was the first in the world
who submitted patents for manufacturing
automobile parts by cold-forming, pressing,
torch- or spot-welding. Soon after graduation,
from 1902, Fejes was employed in the
Westinghouse factory in France. The factory’s
car, designed by Fejes, won first prize at the
Coup de la Presse race in 1907. From 1911
Fejes worked as constructor in the Mátyásföld
plant of the Hungarian General Engineering Co.
He recognised that certain problems with the
engines, stemming from casting difficulties or
overweight, could be avoided if engines were
constructed using innovative technologies.
Fejes replaced all cast and heavy pressed parts
with cold-formed parts made of iron and steel
plates. Cold forming allowed the use of steel
plates of much smaller thickness than that of Fejes’s experimental aero engine as exhibited in the
Szolnok Aero Museum
casts and thus the dead-weight of vehicles
designed by Fejes was 30 to 35 percent lighter
than cars manufactured using traditional methods. Another advantage of the plated
engine was that on impacts, it dented and did not rupture as easily as cast engines. In
1922 Fejes established a company in Hungary to implement his patents and, in 1927, he
set up “The Fejes Patents Syndicate Ltd.” in England. After a successful pilot run,
another company, Ascot Motor and Manufacturing Co. Ltd. was created. However,
Austin, then a leader in the UK car market, was afraid of Ascot spoiling the market with
its low-cost cars and used its influence as a share-holder in the company to thwart the
launching of the series production.
One of the most talented technical forebears of the
American automotive industry, József Galamb
(1881-1955) was born in a small Hungarian town,
Makó, in 1881. Shortly after graduating at the
Budapest Technical University, he joined the
biggest Hungarian automobile factory in Arad. In
1903, he crossed the Atlantic to try his luck in the
United States. He began to work with Ford´s in
December 1905.
The Model T designed by
Galamb was ready by 1908 and 19 thousand cars
were sold the next year. Its most important part
was the planetary gearbox, one of Galamb´s most brilliant inventions. By 1915,
production reached 1 million units and by 1927, when the production of the Model T
stopped, a total of 15 million had left the factory. József Galamb also designed the
world-famous Fordson tractor and the ignition plug. During World War I, he designed
ambulance vans and light tanks. In 1927, he designed the modern and more elegant
Model A to replace the now old-Model T. In 1937 he was appointed as chief constructor
at Ford´s, and he kept this position until his retirement in 1944.
Kálmán Kandó (1869-1930) One of the sensations of the summer season in 1898 was
a small electric train carrying the guests of a French lakeside hotel at Evian Les Bains to
and fro the close-by medicinal spring. The “S”-shaped track was merely 300 metres
long, the train ran only at a speed of 10 km/hour, yet, its novel construction aroused
great interest. The motor wagon, supplied by the Budapest-based Ganz Factory, was
designed by a 29-year-old engineer, Kálmán Kandó, who had been already working on
a project of much greater size, the
electrification
of
the
Northern-Italian
Valtellina Railway. For the first time in
railway history, Kandó applied high-voltage,
15-period, 3-phase system for electric
traction, a daring solution at that time. The
Valtellina line was opened on September 4,
1902 and its success earned great
international recognition for Kandó.
Kandó’s research focused on creating large
energy systems, in which electric current
generated for lighting and industrial use,
were also used for electric haulage. He
worked out a revolutionary system of phase-changing haulage, whereby locomotives
were powered by the standard, 50-period, single-phase alternating current used in the
national energy supply system. By integrating the electric power needs of the railways,
the industry and the public, Kandó managed to find the ideal solution for energy
rationalisation for any country. Kandó´s invention of the phase-changing electric
locomotive undoubtedly opened a new epoch in the history of railway development.