OTTÓ TITUSZ BLÁTHY

(1860–1939)

It is an exceptional moment in the history of a nation and of science as well, when several of its master minds have been able to work almost simultaneously and at the same place of work. Their names are mentioned together by historiography. Fortunately, this has happened in Hungary as well.

The great triad of Ottó Titusz Bláthy, Miksa Déri, and Károly Zipernowsky was connected by the transformer, their revolutionary invention presented in 1885; besides the transformer, however, other joint works of theirs were produced during their years of creation.

The youngest among them, Ottó Titusz Bláthy, was born a son of a well-to-do merchant family in Tata on 11 August, 1860. Tata was the home of even the primitive man. Numerous material remains of people living 50 thousand years ago have been found (stone utensils, flint splinters). According to the testimony of diplomas, Tata was elevated to the rank of a country town as early as the 14th century. During the reigns of Sigismund and King Matthias, many foreign princes visited the town. Jakab Fellner, the great architect of the Baroque era, also played a significant role in the formation of the town's appearance which remained virtually unaltered even in the course of the decades following the compromise. Ottó Titusz Bláthy strolled along these streets of yore.

Even as a young pupil, he excelled by his affinity to Mathematics, and his teacher often called him in front of his senior school-mates to solve the problems that they had not been able to cope with.

From this small town of a particular atmosphere, he went to the technical university of Vienna, where he received his engineer's degree in 1882. The main observations of his dissertation on the theory of belt drives were built into the material of the following academic year's lectures by his professors.

His interest was roused by the developing Hungarian manufacturing industry and after completing his studies he applied for employment at the MÁV machine works. "You shall be employed by the electrical section of the MÁV machine works as a machine designer with a salary of 75 florins per month, starting from 1 July, 1883," as can be read in the respective record of the time.

The electrical section of the factory was headed by Károly Zipernowsky at that time. From then on, their lives were almost inseparably united. For Bláthy, this position meant a great opportunity and a great challenge at the same time. In the course of the months to follow, he dug in the study of a relatively new special field, electrical engineering. "I studied the experiments of Faraday, Ohm, and Ampčre with great excitement because I had not heard a word about them at the technical university of Vienna" – he writes in his memoirs.

In 1821, French physicist and mathematician Ampčre discovered that iron becomes magnetized in the proximity of conductors transmitting current. Ten years later, in 1831, the British physicist Faraday assumed that if magnetism is produced by current, consequently electricity can be produced by a moving magnet. Faraday – elected an honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences two years before Bláthy was born – had provided an iron ring with two separate windings and passing current in one of the windings, it became magnetized, inducing a current impulse in the other winding at the moments of switching on and off. In 1826, German physicist Ohm, a secondary school teacher in Köln, determined the electric conductivity of wires, and as soon as 1830 he could measure the voltage. He stated that voltage equals the product of current intensity and resistance, this being the law later named after him. Later the British physicist Maxwell formulated all this in a uniform system of equations, making the way to the practical application of these discoveries.

Ottó Titusz Bláthy was not satisfied with the theory only. He discovered the practical application of the connection between the magnetic field and the excitation creating it. This led to an improved design of DC engines. From the experiments he developed a science of then unforeseeable practical benefits. In 1884, he designed an automatic mercury voltage regulator for direct-current dynamos as his first patent. In the years to come, the generators of several current-generating plants in Italy were operated by this regulator. From 1884 on, on the basis of another patent of his, high-precision wattmeters were produced. These were the first instruments with which the power of alternating current could be measured for any phase shift between voltage and current.

Bláthy, as it has already been mentioned, went to work to the Ganz Works in the summer of 1883, where experiments in connection with creating a transformer had already begun. He immediately joined the work, and as early as 1885, the alternating-current transformer, the revolutionary invention of the great triad was presented; power transmission even to great distances could be solved with it.

The new current distribution system invented by them was based on the application of devices with a closed iron core, connected parallel to each other on both sides, with an arbitrary ratio, operated by alternating current, denominated transformers by the inventors. Shunt connection was the idea of Károly Zipernowsky. The experiments were performed by Miksa Déri (he soon continued working in Vienna), whereas Bláthy contributed to the success by suggesting the use of closed iron cores. The greater voltage on the primary side was converted in each transformer to a smaller, service voltage. Demand for power-plant-side (voltage-increasing) transformers came at the end of the 19th century, due to voltage increase in power transmission lines.

The new system was presented at the National Exhibition in Budapest in 1885. The entire area of the exhibition was illuminated by alternating current, distributed at 1,350 Volt primary voltage, of a frequency of 70 Hz, utilizing 1,067 incandescent lamps and 75 small shell-type transformers. It was an immense success.

Bláthy soon departed from the lights of Pest, leaving for America, where he also visited the Edison Works. It was there that he observed that the parameters of the exciting coils of the machines to be produced were established on the basis of empirically set charts. Bláthy proved that these data can be arrived at by way of rigorous calculations as well, thus winning the admiration of the engineers at the factory. He did not stay in America for a long time. Work in the Ganz Works was awaiting him.

The transformer system brought considerable international recognition for both the factory and its creators. In 1886, the power plant in Rome was built, then in 1892, the hydro-electric power station at Tivoli; the energy produced there was also transported to Rome. The latter hydro-electric power station was in fact the biggest hydroelectric current-generating plant in Europe at that time as well as the first power transmission supplying an entire urban distribution system from a considerable distance (through a 28 km long power transmission line), directly from the high-voltage generators. Rome was followed by Vienna, where an electric power plant was established on the basis of the transformer system of the Ganz Works.

The construction of the Budapest electricity works also dates back to the same period. From 1895 on, the development of the transformers of the Ganz Works was associated with the names of Ottó Titusz Bláthy and another genius, Kálmán Kandó. (As we have mentioned earlier, Déri was already working in Vienna and Károly Zipernowsky became a professor at the Technical University.)

The first specimen of the kilowatt-hour meter produced on the basis of Bláthy's patent and named after him was presented by the Ganz Works at the Frankfurt Fair in the autumn of 1889, and the first induction kilowatt-hour meter was already marketed by the factory at the end of the same year. (These were the first alternating-current wattmeters, known by the name of Bláthy-meters.)

The patent was registered in the autumn of 1889, and this is the time since the Ganz Meter Works has existed. The first Bláthy-meters were mounted on a wooden base, running at 240 revolutions per minute (the number of revolutions was difficult to read at total load); they weighed 23 kg. (by the beginning of the 1920s, their weight was decreased to its one-tenth.)

In 1889, he created a suspension-piston, servo-motor system for the automatic regulation of water turbines. This regulator was first applied in the construction of the power plant at Innsbruck.

Kálmán Kandó started work at the electrical section of the Ganz Works in 1894. Experiments with electric traction had been going on in the factory since 1892, and it was Kandó who realized that induction engines – invented by Nicola Tesla – could be made capable of railway traction as well. On his initiative, the question of three-phase electric traction was investigated. Their first three-phase electric railway operated at the bank of Lake Geneva from 1898 on.

Bláthy's interest was also aroused by the three-phase system. (The system was discovered by the British engineer Hopkinson in 1880, when he realized that three alternating currents in phase shift with each other can be transmitted easier than normal alternating current.) Ottó Titusz Bláthy developed the up to now one-phase generator and transformer into a three-phase one. With this, a new technical and economic prosperity began in Hungarian heavy-current industry.

The application possibilities of transformers also became wider: further power plants were constructed in Dalmatia and Italy, and the transformers of these were considered to be a record of that time. All this shows the indefatigable creativity of Bláthy and his colleagues.

The steam turbine created at the beginning of the present century, in the victory of which Bláthy played a significant role as well, presented new tasks for generator designers. Bláthy took the lead in this field, too. He designed his turbogenerator in 1903, and as early as 1911, the Ganz Works could present a turbogenerator of 4,200 kW power to experts at the exhibition in Torino.

Bláthy was a man of practice. At the sight of the pictures of a damaged generator, this was all he said: "Now we know how to reinforce coil ends against short circuits." Later on there were no such failures. The orders of the Ganz Works increased; generators acquired a reputation for both the factory and Bláthy.

The Great Recession and the years to follow did not favour large-scale investments, nor the products of this factory, either. High-power electric railway traction then began in Hungary. Bláthy was also brought down by the sudden death of Kandó in 1931, who was not only a passive observer of this invention, but it was he, in fact, who actually improved the phase-converter electric locomotive devised in 1923. He himself was already getting well on in years, as well; past 70, he wanted to continue, because it should be continued, what Kandó had not been able to accomplish.

He had more than a hundred patents. Nearly all his days were taken up by the world of the drawing desk and engine rooms. Is it possible to have free time left after all this? It is a great riddle, but Bláthy solved it.

Ever since his young age, he had been a great enthusiast of cycling. He was a well-known figure in the streets of Buda, where he would ride his special, direct-drive, large-wheeled bike, his own design. Later on he made high-ratio, cog-wheeled bicycles. He also had an extensive collection of special bicycles. He made tours throughout Italy, Austria, and Bosnia by bicycle.

At the time automobiles appeared, his attention turned towards motoring, and he remained to be an enthusiastic driver until his old age. As vice-president of the Automobile Club of the time, he regularly participated in car race juries. On one occasion, he was asked by his colleagues whether he would like to fly by an airplane. Bláthy's concise answer was the following:

"No, I would not. It is not for me any longer. It is great enjoyment, though, to look down on the earth as if it were a live map. Do you know what my greatest sports enjoyment has been in my life? Cycling! One cannot even imagine purer joy than the feeling I had racing along the serpentines of the Bosnian mountains. Vehicles faster than bicycles already prevent you from enjoying the beauties of the scenery in perfect tranquility."

He was also a passionate dog-lover and dog-breeder at the same time. His dogs won awards at several exhibitions. Money – which he was not short of – did not remain in his pocket for long. For him, this was not a measure of value.

Chess also played a particular part in his life. His book titled 'Vielzügige Schachaufgaben', introducing new possibilities of chess problems, such as "White starts and mates in 125 moves ", was published in Leipzig in 1891. If you feel like it, try it. His record was a 300-move end game.

On Christmas greeting cards, not only did he send his best wishes, but chess problems as well. He was considered to be a genius of chess problems throughout the Continent. In the last period of his life, he sold his house on Sváb Hill and stayed in Hotel Hungaria.

He was a colourful personality, and lived a plentiful and substantial life. He was not conceited at all. When he was celebrated on his 70th birthday, he only said modestly: "In my days it used to be easy. Science was like a tropical forest. All you needed was a good axe, and wherever you stroke, you could chop down an enormous tree. Now you may walk for entire days without even finding a bush."

In 1917, he was conferred an honorary degree by the Technical Universities of Budapest and Vienna, respectively, and in 1927 he was elected honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He was awarded a long range of foreign decorations, and was not short of recognition in Hungary, either. However, he was proud of the fact that he had been the first to receive the Kandó-medallion of the Hungarian Society of Engineers and Architects.

He was active even at the age of 79. He managed experiments even from the sanatorium. On 25 September, 1939, he still sent a message to the factory. The next day only the herald arrived with the news that a prosperous career had ended.

The inventions of the late infant prodigy in Tata spread his and the factory's fame to faraway lands. His name shall remain among those who have set the landmarks of science. His statue stands in the yard of the vocational secondary school named after him, with hundreds of students passing by each day. One of them, perhaps, will be a future Bláthy.