THE HISTORY OF TUNGSRAM 1896-1945 - MEK

21 TUNGSRAMTHE INTRODUCTION OF TUNGSTEN TECHNOLOGYIN THE PRODUCTION OF INCANDESCENT LAMPSTUNGSRAM'S TRANSFORMATIONINTO A LARGE CORPORATION (1906-1914)On the extraordinary general meeting held on 23 May,1906 the official designation of the Ujpest factory wasmodified to EgyesiJlt Izzolampa es Villamossagi Rt."United Incandescent Lamp and Electric Company".This is the original registered style together with itsantecedents were named, "abbreviated" for simplicity,TUNGSRAM. After buying up the patent of Justand Hanaman's invention, the company spent morethan a year trying to perfect the production technologyof tungsten lamps. (91) The two inventors themselvesparticipated in the experiments, in the course of whichseveral problems arose. In essence, tungsten wasextracted in glowing gas from tungsten-hexachlorideonto the surface of a carbon filament. The carbon wasthen removed by heating the filament in moist hydrogengas. Unfortunately, the resulting tungsten filamentproved to be very fragile. The company wishedto rectify this problem by employing special-purposesupport wires. (92)In March, 1906 the succes of the experiments alreadysuggested that the mass-production of tungstenlamps could soon commence. To be able to do that,however, the company would have had to investsubstantial sums which it did not have. On short noticeTUNGSRAM could have sold its power plants inLosonc and Budafok or its factory in the Huszar Streetonly at a great loss. The only course of action seemedto be the raising of the company's equity, to which thegeneral meeting eventually gave its consent on 23March, 1906. The shares issued in the nominal value of1 million Koronas were bought up by the CommercialBank and Niederosterreichische Escompte Gesellschaftat a rate of 115 percent. (93)The hopes of an early start in the mass-production oftungsten lamps, however, proved a little too optimistic.Steady work and perseverance was needed toovercome the difficulties. Nevertheless, the companyswiftly made the necessary preparations for production:in September, 1906 it put its new (second)power plant into operation and by then it has alsocompleted the work sites. (94)By late September the difficulties of mass-productionhad been largely overcome and hence the preparationsfor a trial run producing 600 lamps a day couldcommence. The company made the start of massproductionpending on the results of this test. (95)Since at the beginning of the trial run certain disagreementsemerged between the inventors and the managerof the Lamp Manufacturing Department, theexecutive committee decided that:- the trial run currently being performed as well asthe mass-production under preparation must, withoutfail, involve the participation of Dr. Sandor Just andFerenc Hanaman;- as soon as mass-production replaces the trial run,the inventors must be given laboratory where they cancontinue with their research aimed at further developingthe tungsten lamp;-the executive committee must invest the necessaryamount for mass-production as soon as possible;-V-^>