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#178970 06/18/08 04:26 PM
Joined: Dec 2001
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Last year I promised to post pictures I took at the Electrical museum... now I finally got around to do it.

They had strange things there...
The gentleman who guided us through the museum explained at one point it was intended to only run MV lines and install a transformer in every building. Thus, these nicely enclosed transformers were developed, intended to appear like a piece of furniture.
[Linked Image from electricalphotos.com]

Then they had this working carbon arc lamp:
[Linked Image from electricalphotos.com]
It gave an intense blueish-white and flickering light.

Now the real interesting stuff... a collection of old switches. Note the very American-looking push button switches at the bottom right!
[Linked Image from electricalphotos.com]

There are more pictures, but I don't have the time to upload them right now, I'll do that tomorrow.

Last edited by Texas_Ranger; 06/18/08 04:34 PM.
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Originally Posted by Texas_Ranger
The gentleman who guided us through the museum explained at one point it was intended to only run MV lines and install a transformer in every building.


That might have deterred some of the DIY bodges, at the very least!

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Originally Posted by pauluk
That might have deterred some of the DIY bodges, at the very least!

Nah, you just need more tape with MV. grin

Joined: Dec 2001
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Besides, that might have restricted those guys to the load side of the transformer... but not much more. That means the in-house wiring would have been as bad as anything else.

Various light sockets and adaptors:
[Linked Image from electricalphotos.com]

Old bell buttons, some of them fairly weird
[Linked Image from electricalphotos.com]
1910 all electric kitchen and panel. While the fuses strongly ressemble Diazed fuses they actually aren't. Diazed fuses consist of two parts (the screw cap and the actual fuse) whereas these are one-piece like US plug fuses. They have the same Edison thread though and seem to fit Diazed sockets. The tip diameters are different, I've seen such a 6 amp fuse and the tip diameter is close to a 25 amp Diazed.
[Linked Image from electricalphotos.com]

Various household items - panels, meters, vacuum cleaner, floor buffer, telephone, door bell,...
[Linked Image from electricalphotos.com]
The large panel to the left is a servants bell. Several flip signs indicate where someone rang for a servant. Back in the day fancy houses had a bell in every room.

Everything needed to wire a house in 1910... isolators for exposed knob&tube, switches, sockets, conduit, boxes,...
[Linked Image from electricalphotos.com]

This seems to be a switched MV UG to OH connection point.
[Linked Image from electricalphotos.com]

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Wow!

A chicken in every pot and a transformer in every living room eh?

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I can't remember anything we were told there, but many Hungarian houses (in the suburbs and out in the country) don't have a basement, so the transformer serving the entire house had to be put somewhere in the living space. The idea didn't really catch though.

Budapest had the electrical distribution built by two companies, downtown was wired by the Austrian Edison Company which of course used DC. Everything else was wired by Ganz, the Budapest based Electrical plant, whose founder was one of Europe's AC pioneers and inventor of new transformer types.

The museum was once a large rectifier station built in the 1920s, later a transformer substation.

Vienna had a similar mix of power systems, the mainly residential areas were wired for DC; the industrial areas had AC as early as 1903 (3 phase AC, probably 127/220V). The last DC supplies were converted to AC (220V three phase wye, though no neutral wire supplied, only bonded to ground at the transformer) in 1955. Throughout the 1960s and 70s these 127/220V supplies were converted to 220/380V 3 phase wye with neutral.

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Never been there, I should take the time tomorrow and see it.
:~)
Thanks for the post, really makes my heart warm to see those pics.

Ganz was also demolished by the socialists, as all private industries, such as Weiss Manfred Ind, Csepel, where bikes, buses and all kinds of machines were produced.

Ganz producd the first transformator, or the electricity meter.

Rest of the mass transport vehicles, Metros, Buses, Trams, local trans were produced there and still running on the streets of Budapest(tho it ismostly the lack of money and good experts that these werent reconstructed during the years).

Anyway, here you can find a short text of the ind,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganz
this is very brief, I might take the time and translate the Hungarian version.

Last edited by Gloria; 06/28/08 09:12 PM.

The world is full of beauty if the heart is full of love
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It's really fascinating... I bet you could see my eyes shining as I was walking through. We were guided by a very nice gentleman who still had memories of the Austro-hungarian empire and spoke very fluent German. He even did a bilingual German-English tour as there was a couple from Belgium.

The address is
Magyar Elektrotechnikai Múzeum
Kazinczy u. 21
H - 1075 Budapest

If I remember correctly that's close to the Opera M1 stop.

Their website http://www.emuzeum.hu used to be Hungarian/German/English but I can't find anything but the Hungarian version now.

This museum was one of the two "triggers" for my very first tour to Budapest last summer. The second was the news of the UV streetcars going out of service with the closure of the Freedom bridge.

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Ragnar,
Brilliant job, man.
I like the pics.
Strangely enough, it seems funny how these fittings look very similar to some you would find in a museum over here or anywhere else in the world.
Design trends seemed to catch on back then, these days it's called "Intellectual Property".

That U/G-O/H box is rather interesting, if my eyesight is correct, it shows the phase sequence, Blue, Yellow, Red, not a colour sequence I would automatically associate with Hungary.
The box has expulsion fuses (which is normal with MV gear) and even a free hot-stick to turn the supply off, should you need to, if your tape melts.

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Yes, in the old days fittings were pretty similar around the world. I've seen pictures from Sweden where I recognised the light switches our house had when it was built in 1914...

Blue/yellow/red seems to have been common there, though I don't really know when or how exactly... domestic wiring was usually black/grey/red as in Austria or Germany. I've seen the odd supply with above colors, though it had two Diazed fuses and a solid link for the blue wire... it was disconnected, so don't ask me waht kind of supply this might have been. It probably once fed outdoor lighting. Maybe 3 wire DC... no idea. It was in pretty bad shape, parts missing and rusty, so I couldn't really tell what I was looking at.

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