Hungarians in the History of Transport

From Coaches to the Underground

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).

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.

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.

The Hungarian Coach Drawing by Jeremias Schemel from 1568

A coach-and-four or barouche on a 18th century litography

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 ship-building, 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.

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.

Martin’s floating wheel

Nemethy’s design of an aileron

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 skeleton-structured 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 two-cylinder 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”.

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 air-crafts, Zsélyi experimented with gas turbines. 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.

Coin issued by the Hungarian National Bank to commemorate the 125th anniversary of Adorján’s birth

Zsélyi in his plane’s cockpit

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 deve-lopments in Europe, in 1930 he accepted the directorship of the Guggenheim Aero-nautical Laboratory at the California Institute of Tech-nology (GALCIT) and emig-rated to the United States. Kármán's fame was in the use of mathematical tools to study fluid flow, and the 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 (1877-1969) 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.

Animation of the phenomenon von Kármán vortex street

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In the first decades of modern aviation history, aeroplane designers seeking for new flying techniques probed many different solutions; along with the rigid-wing “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 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.

Asboth’s AH4 helicopter during a demonstration flight

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. Self-taught 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 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, water-injection engines, while Csonka concentrated on automobiles.

In 1904, the Hungarian Post Office announced an international tender for the purchase of 8 mail vans. The tender was won by Csonka´s original, four-

cylinder car, which started its 8-day, 2000-kilometre trial run on May 31, 1905. This date is considered the birth of Hungarian automobile manufacturing.

Csonka and his „Csonka 1904” model

The Banki-Donat carburettor

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 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.

Fejes’s experimental aero engine as exhibited in the Szolnok Aero Museum

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.