At the beginning of 21st century the standards of industry and craftsman training in Hungary was much lower than those of the developed countries. Many of the university’s predecessors made an attempt to alter the circumstances. The most important person of all was Baron József Eötvös, the creator of the idea of a secondary industrial school, as Minister of Religion and Public Education initiated government measures to organize a central model school in the capital and set up training courses for the leaders and managers of large-scale industry. Dr. Ágost Trefort, Minister of Religion and Public Education, continued József Eötvös’s work and established the Public Secondary Industrial School of Budapest in 1879. His name is also associated with the foundation of a number of other institutions during this time.
The following lines are quotes from the directorate of the newly founded Public Secondary Industrial School: “On 2 November of p. year the Ministry of Religion and Public Education opens a secondary industrial school at 28 Bodzafa Str., where the leaders and managers of large-scale industry are being trained.”(announcement)
Dr Trefort set up another new institution which had significant impact on our nation’s industrial growth and the school’s everyddy life at the same time: he established the Technological Industry Museum. After these two institutions started their operations, Trefort integrated the operations of the museum and industrial school and assigned Károly Hegedűs, the director of the industrial school, the museum’s leadership and supervision as director general.
The demand to place the two institutions into a shared building was fulfilled in the former facility of the fire department on Nagykörút, behind the Népszínház on. Here the palace of the Hungarian industry, the new home of the Secondary Industrial School and Technological Museum – as Pesti Napló’s chronicler writes it – was built.
After the curriculum modifications and changes in the organizational structure in 1896 the school was renamed as Hungarian Royal Public Higher Industrial School. According to the first section of the statutes:
“… its aim and task is, that for the domestic manufacturing industry, the transport companies and the agriculture, training mechanical engineers, chemists, foremen and generally specialists like that, who with time become independent craftsmen, leaders of smaller industrial establishments and factories, moreover that of the domestic metal and iron industry as well as those branches in timber industry which were inserted into the circle of the teaching.”
The Hungarian Royal Public Training School of Mechanics and Watchmaking was established in 1898. The aim of the secondary training school was to increase skilled workers, assistants and independent craftsmen for the watchmaking and mechanics industry, and hereby to develop the domestic watchmaking and mechanics industry, especially spread the necessary expertise. The training school started its operation in a tenement house at 26 Kisfaludy Str., Józsefváros in Budapest.
In 1901, in order to satisfy the demands of its rapid development, the training school was moved to the impressive building at 15 Tavaszmező Str., decorated with Art Nouveau ornaments and constructed according to designs by Gyula Pártos. The marble slab placed in the doorway of the building was to inform about the founders.
Written in secessionist letters in the glass mosaic with a beautiful arc this inscription can be found: M. K. Állami Mechanikai és Órásipari Szakiskola (H. R. Public Training School of Mechanics and Watchmaking).
In the academic year of 1920/1921, the name of the school was changed to the Hungarian Royal Public Training School of Mechanics and Electric Industry, thereby also expressing an increasing tendency towards electrotechnics. Thus it became the first institution in Hungary to bear the word electric in its title.
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