History of the Faculty
In domestic engineering higher education, the training of civil engineers dates back the furthest. Empress Maria Theresa's decree of 1753 incorporated subjects into the University of Nagyszombat's curriculum that were important, for example, for surveyors. The main points of our quarter-millennium history are followed by the timeline below.
The Institutum Geometricum, founded in 1782, was Europe's first civilian engineering training institute, which taught technical sciences within a university framework (under the predecessor of today's ELTE). The institute's main subjects were practical engineering, geodesy, hydrotechnics, as well as mechanics, technology, and architecture. Field practices were also held for students around the capital. The institute's first director, Ferenc Rausch, taught hydrotechnics himself.
Engineers who graduated from the institute were almost immediately employed by various state administration bodies, due to the severe shortage of trained specialists in the country. The diplomas issued by the Engineering Institute were the world's very first civilian engineering degrees. In the institute, which operated until 1850 – after István Tichy – nearly 1200 more engineers obtained their diplomas, including figures like Pál Vásárhelyi or Ferenc Reitter. The future first rector of the Technical University, József Sztoczek, also graduated here. The first engineer academician was József Beszédes – who received his diploma in 1813 – elected in 1831. Beszédes was the most renowned hydraulic engineer of the era alongside Pál Vásárhelyi.
Within the technical department, the training of civil engineers, mechanical engineers, and chemical engineers was separated starting from the 1863/1864 academic year. This system was already a precursor to the modern faculty structure.
Due to overload, there was a need to establish more departments. Immediately, two departments each and their own laboratories were organized for road and railway engineering, water engineering, and bridge engineering.
At its head – just as today – stood the elected dean. The first leader of the Faculty of Civil Engineering was István Kruspér, the author of the first Hungarian-language geodesy textbook. Students obtained their diplomas after successfully passing two, then three comprehensive exams (between 1871 and 1921, approximately 3300 engineering diplomas were issued). The number of engineering students enrolled per academic year in the last third of the 19th century varied between 300-700. Meanwhile, while in 1882/83, 58% of all students were engineers, by 1908/09 it was barely 40%.
At the university, and thus at the faculty as well, a fixed curriculum was used starting from the 1874/75 academic year:
Between 1868 and 1880, the institution also issued surveyor diplomas, but these were valid only for cadastral surveys. In 1886, the Technical University issued its first jubilee (gold) diploma to engineer Lajos Pották.
The university's first engineering doctor in 1902 was civil engineer Szilárd Zielinski, who later became professor of road and railway construction. The university also received the right to award honorary doctorates at that time. The first civil engineering honorary doctor was university professor Antal Kherndl in 1915. By the turn of the millennium, about 30 more civil engineers had received this recognition.
In the decade of the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, material testing methods were introduced for engineering students; at that time, the "experimental station" for examining building materials and the Nagymaros water gauge station were established. In Hungarian higher education curriculum, the mechanization of calculations and machine computation algorithms first appeared at the faculty, in the geodesy course material.
At that time, the economics, forestry engineering, metallurgy engineering, and veterinary faculties also belonged to it. The outstanding figures in civil engineering education between the two world wars were József Jáky, Aladár Vendl, and Győző Michailich. József Jáky was associated with, among other things, the foundation work of Ferihegy Airport; Aladár Vendl was an internationally renowned professor of mineralogy and geology; while Győző Michailich played a defining role in the domestic spread of reinforced concrete. He was also the first director of the Engineering Continuing Education Institute, founded in 1939 and still operating at BME today. In the first years, about one-third of the approximately 10,000 engineers living in Hungary at the time participated in the continuing education courses organized by the institute.
During World War II, the duration of studies was temporarily shortened at the faculty as well, with the 9th semester subjects incorporated into the 7th-8th semesters. Senior engineering students were taken to Germany in December 1944 to complete their studies there. On behalf of the Technical University, Professor Győző Michailich of the Faculty of Engineering bid farewell to the young students and the accompanying instructors, including several from the civil engineering faculty. Most of them experienced the end of the war there. Eight faculty members – in recognition of their work in reconstruction – received the first Kossuth Prizes in 1948, including three civil engineers (József Jáky, Győző Michailich, and Károly Széchy).
Then in 1952, the civil and architectural engineering faculties became independent under the name Építőmérnöki Műszaki Egyetem (ÉME).
From this time on, the three-faculty university operated with its own rector and administrative organization.
It was here that the demands were formulated which became the program points of the revolution. The Engineering Faculty was represented in the instructors' Revolutionary Committee elected on October 30 by Emil Mosonyi, Imre Korányi, Endre Kerkápoly, and Lajos Kollár. Mosonyi was removed from the university due to his involvement following the suppression of the freedom fight. Lajos Kollár became one of the founders of the Technical University 1956 Foundation.
Evening and correspondence education at the faculty began in the early 1950s through the branches led by the State Technical College's engineering faculty, which later transformed into the faculty's evening and correspondence sections. The faculty has offered surveyor engineer training since 1957. Specialized engineer training started at the faculty in 1961. Modern computer science education also began in the early 1960s. In 1970, they acquired their own computer, the ODRA-1204, which was the first of its kind at BME. The faculty computer center was completed in 1972. Among the 1975 university curriculum reforms, new curricula were developed for the Faculty of Civil Engineering, followed soon by their review. With the 1990 education law, faculty curricula were restructured along new guidelines. The faculty's first Széchenyi Prize-winning instructor was Endre Kerkápoly (1991), and its first Professor Emeritus was István Hazay (1993).