“The first stop on the journey through Ganz’s history: 1878, the foundation of Ganz Electrical Department! Ganz was founded in 1844, under the leadership of Ábrahám Ganz, who at that time employed only 7 workers in his iron foundry in Pest. Ten years later, he launched the production of the bark-cast railway wheels and the grinding equipment for the mill industry. These first “hit products” of Mr. Ábrahám brought limelight to the name of Ganz as it has become recognized both in Hungary and internationally. Even the sudden death of the founding father, Ábrahám Ganz in 1867 did not interrupt the company’s development, as András Mechwart, the mechanical engineer of Ganz took over the management and confidently led the company – now rebranded as Ganz & Co. – towards an even higher level of recognition. In 1878, under the direction of András Mechwart, the Ganz Electric Department was established in the second district of Budapest, and it was headed by the other well-known engineer, Károly Zipernowsky. The Electrical Department first produced arc and incandescent lamps and DC dynamos, contributing the use of electricity all over Europe from the World Expositions in Paris and Vienna, the Opera Houses in Budapest and Vienna, to the street lighting in Rome. Thanks to the Electrical Department, Ganz became the heart of electricity in Central Europe. The company was also an exhibitor at the internationally renowned Sydney World Fairs in 1879 and Melbourne World Fairs in 1880. “

The third stop on the journey through Ganz’s history: 1885, the year when the world’s first transformer was invented and patented by three of Ganz’s engineers.
At the time, Károly Zipernowsky, the head of our company’s electrical department, recognized the unique abilities of Ottó Bláthy, who worked as a mechanical engineer at Ganz. Thanks to his professional knowledge the expert represented the company at the 1884 National Exhibition in Turin, Italy. At the event, Ottó Bláthy encountered the secondary generator type alternating current power distribution system developed by Lucien Gaulard and John Dixon Gibbs. Bláthy noticed that the system does not use a closed iron core, and he shorted the inductor’s poles with an iron rod as a substitute. During this period, Zipernowsky was already working with Miksa Déri on a parallel connected power distribution system patented by them on 2nd January 1885. The further development of the system was boosted by Bláthy’s experience gained at the Italian exhibition, as they extended their experiments to a closed iron core design for the induction device. In March 1885, thanks to the successful experiments, the engineers of Ganz, Zipernowsky, Déri, and Bláthy invented and patented the world’s first transformer having a closed iron core with core or shell type construction, any voltage ratio and suitable for energy transmission. The patent also covered various versions of iron cores constructed from insulated iron wire and insulated iron sheet.
The transformer was presented to professionals at the National Exhibition in Budapest in 1885. The product was not recognised as a Ganz invention in several countries, even though it solved the issue of transformer-based electricity distribution and energy transmission, as well as making it possible to separate the different consumer points from each other. Despite this, in many places, including the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy or Italy, transformers manufactured by Ganz were used to a large extent.”