A Voyage to Planet Crypton from the World's First Cryptonite Factory

Ajka's past is rich in industrial monuments, cultural and intellectual industrial heritage. They serve as the basis for developing a cultural, touristic and innovation district and adapt the past values to the present and the future by rethinking the 21st-century use of the minerals, rocks and products that once made Ajka, with its creative industries, great. Ajka’s greatness came from processing wood, mining coal, making glass and smelting aluminium. Can we use wood, coal, glass and aluminium in new fields and industries today?

The Krypton Plant building is part of Ajka's intellectual and architectural heritage. The exploitation of the process Imre Bródy's invented was considered pure madness in the 1930s, but Lipót Aschner, then CEO of Egyesült Izzó (Tungsram), saw its long-term potential. With the help of an expert from Tungsram, Bródy managed to develop a new process that still holds a prominent place in the industrial history of Hungary. The innovation promised people a higher quality of life.

When the impossible mission was accomplished, the world's first krypton extraction plant was built in Ajka and the company Tungsram became a global success.

The top manager of the Tungsram was well aware of the climatic and technical conditions of the Csinger Valley. Thanks to the new process, krypton gas extracted from the clean Bakony air was soon on its way in cylinders to the Tungsram plant in Budapest. With the new technology the rest of the world's other leading light bulb manufacturers were soon surpassed.

The world's first krypton plant stayed in operation until the summer of 1944. In February 1947, Egyesült Izzó’s management wanted to restart production, but the machines were dismantled and shipped to the Soviet Union as part of war reparations. In the 1950s, the state-owned MÁVAUT bus company used the vacated building and later sold it to the Ajka Glass Factory. It is currently owned by the Municipality of Ajka.

The first comic book superhero, Superman, was born on the planet Krypton and only kryptonite could neutralise his powers. This may be the reason why Imre Bródy, the inventor of the krypton-filled light bulb, was depicted as Superman in a 2014 exhibition dedicated to Ajka by the students at the high school named after him. Today, with the support of the European Capital of Culture (ECOC) programme, students are working on soul-stirring stories and visual works evoking the spirit of the great inventor under the leadership of art director Zoli Beck (30).

The world's first Krypton Plant was built in 1937. Superman was born in 1938, dreamed up by Jerry Siegel. The superhero’s girlfriend, Lois Lane, is thought to have been modelled after Jerry’s wife, Joanne Siegel - née Jolán Kovács, a daughter of Hungarian immigrants. Was that a coincidence?

Géza Faragó (born in 1912), one of the great masters of Hungarian Art Nouveau, who also excelled in the genre of poster graphics, created the poster for the Tungsram tungsten light bulb. The lady depicted in the poster with a cat at her feet is thought to be the wife of Lipót Aschner, the chief executive of Tungsram. The lady, dressed in urban fashion and wrapped in the night cloak juxtaposed against the candlelit countryside, seems to symbolise the new energy of big cities.

Ajka, on most people's mental map, is a grey, dusty and boring city, perceived as such even by the people who live here. Only through the approach of Veszprém-Balaton JSC’s staff, the ECOC calls for proposals and their encouraging cooperation and involvement, have we come to recognise how much great value Ajka still possesses that can be shared with others. Our plans combine local values, art and present-day myth-creation to preserve and commemorate the local intellectual and cultural heritage. We have tried to develop innovative programme elements that encourage locals to work together, believing that we can offer value and a good experience to others.