Stephen Fodor

* Bratislava, 8 November 1856 – † Budapest, 5 November 1929 / electrical engineer; ; son of Fodor Ambrus, a lawyer from Csallóköz. He had to abandon his studies at the secondary school in his hometown due to his father's illness and took a job in a printing house. He managed to graduate while working, and then, with the help of well-wishers, became an extraordinary student at the College de France in Paris. He acquired his technical training through practical work in factories in France, and then became an employee of the Compagnie Continentale Edison. At the first electrotechnical exhibition in Paris in 1881 (at the Grand Opera), he organized the demonstration of Edison's incandescent lamp lighting, and then built the first European incandescent lamp lighting plants in Strasbourg, Antwerp and Hamburg. Later, he worked in Belgium, the Netherlands, Russia, Finland, England, Algeria and in 1885 in Hungary, at the Magyardiószeg sugar factory, and in 1888 he began the construction of the Athens Central Electric Station, of which he became director. In 1894, he was called back to Hungary to design and build the stations and network of the General Electricity Company. He worked as its CEO until his death. He received several domestic and foreign awards for his achievements in the spread of electric lighting and the development of the electrotechnical industry in general. He was a regular contributor to numerous German, English and French journals, and the author of the first European book on electric incandescent lighting (Vienna, 1885). At the same time as Nikola Tesla, he began research into high-frequency currents. It was thanks to his collaboration that Edison visited Budapest and Bratislava in 1911. ; ; His main works: ; Das Glühlicht, sein Wesen und seine Erfordernisse, 1885, ; Materialien für Kostenvoranschläge elektrischer Lichtanlagen, 1888, ; Die elektrischen Motoren mit besonderer Beschreibung der elektrischen Strassenbahnen, 1890, ; Die elektrischen Verbrauchsmesser, 1891, ; Die elektrische Schweissung und Löthung, 1892, ; Experimente mit Strömen hoher Wechselzahl und Frequenz, 1894, ; The smoke-free city and industry, 1907.