Adam Clark

Portrait of Adam Clark by Miklós Barabás

Adam Clark ( Hungarian Clark Ádám ; born August 14, 1811 in Edinburgh ; died June 23, 1866 in Buda ) was a Scottish bridge construction engineer , best known for his work in Budapest .

biography

Clark grew up in Edinburgh and trained with the engineering firms Darling & Hume and G. Manwaring . In 1834 the company Hunter & English sent him to Pest-Buda , today's Budapest, for the first time . There he supervised the construction of a new dredger for the regulation of the Danube , which István Széchenyi had commissioned for the Austrian government. After two years he returned to Scotland.

From 1839 Adam Clark worked for the English engineer William Tierney Clark (not related). In May of the same year, he was commissioned as chief engineer to build the chain bridge between Buda and Pest , but could only spend a few weeks a year in Pest. Adam Clark therefore took on the role of resident engineer who supervised the engineering work on site. For the next ten years, Clark devoted himself almost exclusively to building the bridge, which opened in November 1849. In addition, from 1847 on Széchenyi's initiative, he was an advisor to the National Transport Commission and in 1848 to the Ministry of Transport. During the Hungarian Revolution of 1848/49, Clark made two decisive contributions to the preservation of the Chain Bridge.

In 1850, Clark was commissioned by the Hungarian government to build the Burgberg tunnel , which runs under the castle district . The work lasted from 1853 to 1856, a year later the tunnel was also opened for horse-drawn vehicles. Clark then worked on smaller jobs.

In 1855 he married the Hungarian Irma Áldásy, with whom he had three children. His grandson György Hajós was an important mathematician. Adam Clark died at the age of 54 in his house in the water town in Buda , in the place of which is now the south wing of the Burggarten Bazaar . A plaque there ( Ybl Miklós tér 6 ) commemorates Clark. He was buried in the family grave of the Áldásys on Kerepesi temetö in Pest.

plant

Chain Bridge as seen from the Castle District, with Clark Ádám tér in the foreground

East portal of the Burgberg tunnel

Clark's most important work is the Chain Bridge , the construction of which he oversaw. (The design came from his supervisor William Tierney Clark.) With an average span of 202 meters, the chain bridge was one of the longest bridges in the world at the time of its opening and had to be exposed to numerous natural features such as the depth of the Danube, a strong current and the accumulation Customized by ice. For example, 5000 wooden stakes were used for the four cofferdams ; Clark personally supervised the procurement of this building material from Slavonia and Tyrol .

Shortly before the end of construction, the Hungarian Revolution broke out in March 1848, which Clark viewed positively. At the end of the year, Lajos Kossuth's army, with around 70,000 soldiers and 300 guns, crossed the bridge, which was temporarily covered with planks, on its retreat, which at the time was not yet completed, but withstood the high loads.

In the final phase of the revolution in 1849, Adam Clark became the "self-appointed keeper of the bridge". In the spring he learned that the Austrian Army was planning to blow up the Chain Bridge to prevent the rebels in Pest from crossing the Danube. He flooded the anchor chambers and destroyed the pumps to minimize the damage in an explosion. The detonation of one of four black powder canisters ultimately caused only minor damage.

On the other hand, General Henryk Dembiński , who led the revolutionary army, gave the order in June 1849 to destroy the Chain Bridge in order to prevent the Austrians from crossing Buda to Pest. Clark then met Dembiński personally and convinced him that a 25-meter gap was enough to prevent the crossing. The removed components could be quickly attached again after the end of the revolution.

Reception and aftermath

Clark's personal commitment to the Chain Bridge and his strong ties to Hungary made him “a kind of folk hero” in Hungary, while he is hardly known in his native Scotland. In 1912, the space between the Chain Bridge and the Castle Hill Tunnel was named in his honor Clark Ádám tér ( Adam Clark Square ). While he was less respected in Stalinist Hungary in the 1950s due to his ties to the aristocracy, his reputation was restored by later communist governments.

A floating crane, inaugurated in 1980, which was involved in the construction of the Árpád Bridge and the salvage of the Hableány , also bears the name Clark Ádám . In 2011 the National Bank of Hungary issued a 5,000 forint commemorative coin to mark Clark's 200th birthday.

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  Bust of Adam Clark in the City Park

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  Memorial plaque for Adam Clark in Szeged from 1931

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  Clark Ádám floating crane (2019)

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  Gold coins (5000 forints) in memory of Adam Clark from 2010

literature

• István Bibó: The Széchenyi Chain Bridge and Adam Clark . Ed .: Imre Gáll. City Hall, Budapest 1999, ISBN 978-963-8376-91-6 .
• Judit Brody: The Széchenyi Chain Bridge at Budapest . In: Technology and Culture . tape 29 , no. 1 , p. 104-117 , doi : 10.2307 / 3105230 .
• József Lengyel: Három hídépítő . Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó, Budapest 1960 ( excerpt from Budapesti negyed magazine ).

Web links

Commons : Adam Clark  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files

• Ádám Clark. In: Magyar életrajzi lexikon 1000–1990 , Magyar Elektronikus Könyvtár
• Clark, Ádám in A Pallas Nagy Lexikona

Individual evidence

1. ^ Judit Brody: The Széchenyi Chain Bridge at Budapest , p. 111.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Adam Clark. In: Encyclopædia Britannica . Retrieved May 19, 2020 (English). 
3. ^ János Horváth: A Panorama of Hungarian Mathematics in the Twentieth Century . tape 14 . Springer, 2006, ISBN 978-3-540-28945-6 , pp. 579 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
4. ^ ^{A b c} Judit Brody: The Széchenyi Chain Bridge at Budapest , p. 112.
5. ^ ^{A b} Judit Brody: The Széchenyi Chain Bridge at Budapest , p. 116.