Hungarian inventions you didn’t know about!

Light Bulb

Although Thomas Alva Edison presented the light bulb on 31 December 1879, his invention needed some improvements. This led to the invention of the Wolfram bulb by Hungarian chemical engineers Sándor Just and Ferenc Hanamann.

Holography

Holography is a technique used to record and later re-construct a wavefront. It was invented by Dénes Gábor in 1947, after he fled Nazi Germany and started to work in Britain. In 1971 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics.

The Turk

Farkas Kempelen fooled the world with his invention. The inventor created a chess-playing machine that was entertaining Hungarian Queen Mária Terézia, but Napoleon and Benjamin Franklin also saw the machine. The original machine presented in 1769 burned in a fire in 1854, but the copy of it exists even today. The trick of the machine was discovered only decades after the passing of its inventor. Although the machine was considered a form of artificial intelligence in its time, it was later discovered that the mechanical machine was in fact moved by a small person inside of it.

Frommer Stop

Frommer stop is a gun invented by Rudolf Frommer. Approximately 350-360,000 pieces of this type of gun were manufactured between 1912 and 1945. The smaller version of the gun is called Frommer Liliput.

Rubik’s Sphere

Like the Rubik’s Cube, this invention is also the work of Ernő Rubik. This logic game has 3 spheres with 6 coloured bullets. The bullets have to be moved from the inner to the outer circles into a dome of the same colour. This game is suitable for kids and adults alike.

Nuclear weapon

The nuclear bomb was developed in the US as part of the Manhattan Project. This was initiated by Leó Szilárd, who developed the idea of the nuclear chain reaction in 1933. The project that started in 1939 was initiated in fear of German atomic developments. Among American, Italian, and English scientists, there were two other Hungarians participating in the project: Ede Teller and János Neumann.

Flavatar

This Hungarian invention makes plants glow in the dark. “Living or preserved flowers and potted plants are surface-treated to make them glow in the dark. Treated cut flowers, potted or preserved plants are ‘filled’ with light and then glow in green, blue, aqua blue, red, white, and orange when placed in the dark,” flavatar.com writes.