Subscribe to our social channels to get the latest news about Hungary!
Six Hungarian geniuses who changed the history of driving forever
Change language:
Henry Ford, Ferdinand Porsche, and the Bentley brothers – the names of the pioneers in the car industry are still preserved in the factories they founded. Perhaps fewer people know, however, that engineers of Hungarian origin also made a significant contribution to the development of the industry. The name of József Galamb, who designed the Ford T-model, is still relatively known, but did you know that one of the inventors of the streamlined body and car safety is also of Hungarian origin?
The first era of driving began when two rival German engineers, Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler, laid the foundations for the revolution in individual mobility by creating the internal combustion engine; this is the first milestone in the rise of cars.
Hungarian engineers also played an important role in the history of the car industry that started around that time.
With the help of information received from the History television channel, Origo recalls the most important Hungarian pioneers in the automotive industry.
The birth of the carburettor
The first petrol engines still used surface atomisation, so the petrol-air mixture produced in the combustion chamber was only more-or-less good. This problem was solved by the invention of the carburettor, invented by two employees of the Ganz factory, Donát Bánki and János Csonka, professors at the Technical University.
The idea, the legend says, was given by a circuit flower girl who sprayed the flowers with a hand water sprayer.
We do not know if this is true. In any case, with the invention, the gasoline engine has become a reliable engine. The patent application was granted to them in 1893, about half a year before the German Wilhelm Maybach. All over the world, the two Hungarian geniuses are still considered the inventors of the carburettor.
From Makó to Detroit
Born into a poor peasant family in Makó, József Galamb had already decided at school that he wanted to work with cars. He first went to Germany on a scholarship and then travelled to America with all his money saved to see the 1900 St. Louis World Fair. He then settled in Detroit, where Henry Ford noticed him. At Ford, Galamb, with another Hungarian, Farkas Eugene, planned the T-Model.
It became a real people’s car, with 15 million sold in twenty years. During the designing, the engineers of Hungarian origin introduced several innovations. His invention was, for example, the planetary gearbox. Until his retirement as a valued employee at Ford, he was involved in the design of several models of József Galamb, aka Joe Galamb, who died in 1955 at the age of 74 in Detroit.
The father of streamlines
The first cars were made with an angular carriage-like body. The science of aerodynamics was brought into the automotive industry by a monarchical engineer. Born in a Hungarian Jewish family, Pál Járay studied in Vienna, Prague, and then designed airships at the famous German Zeppelin factory. After World War I, he built the largest wind tunnel in the world at the time and then turned to cars. He settled in Switzerland, where he opened his auto body design office.
Benz and Daimler did NOT create the first ICE (internal combustion engine) nor were they the first to use an ICE in a vehicle. Theirs was the first commercial use of an ICE in a vehicle, which is a different thing altogether.
WIKI says;
‘1885/1886 Karl Benz designed and built his own four-stroke engine that was used in his automobile, which was developed in 1885, patented in 1886, and became the first automobile in series production.’.
Yes while other types of IC engines were invented prior, Benz designed his own and was the first to get it to a ‘production’ automobile, so more credit here to the first to produce and sell the first automobiles.