She contributed in several industrial projects including developing a volumetric tool for the oil tanks of the Hungarian oil company or working on safety components at the Paks nuclear power plant, or colourimetric observer for tinned tomato pulp. Still, Klára Wenzel, with her fellow BME professor György Ábrahám, made her masterpiece, for end-consumer usage, a glasses for people with dichromacy.
Interview with Klára Wenzel, private professor of BME Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Department of Mechatronics, Optics, and Mechanical Engineering Informatics (MOGI) about childhood memories, legendary professors with a good sense of humour, and in the end, we will get to know, that does she still paint nowadays.
Let us start with the most trivial question. Why mechanical engineering?
It’s hard to tell. Today, I am happy that I had chosen this field, but when I was sixteen, I knew almost nothing about engineering.
My favourite subject was maths, and I was a passionate painter and drawer. I intended to create both beautiful and useful things, machines making housework easier, lamps with a pleasant light, lovely bowls, textiles, sculptures or paintings.
In 1957, after my high school final exam, you could apply for a maximum of two subjects in total on two different universities, an art and a professional one. So, I applied to the College of Fine Arts (today existing as a university, original name: Képzőművészeti Főiskola), and also to BME Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. I had an unsuccessful but useful application to the College of Fine Arts, where I could get to know about the future of the enrolled. Students were screened every year – and who did not pass the requirements (so not making pieces of art in the required ideological style), his legal relationship will be eliminated, although it is hard to tell the standards. I also realised, if someone got enrolled after 6-7 trials, became proud and arrogant, and I would not have preferred to work together with them. So, I decided not to try it again.
My application was successful for BME. I enrolled, moved into my dorm room, and started studying. After a month, I got a letter from the College of Fine Arts, that I was applied, because of the emigration of more of the 1957 college year. It was tempting, but I decided to stay. I felt that I would be more successful in the engineering field.
You were starting your engineering studies after a period with bloody rain falling, an anti-communist revolution unleashed by BME students. Did you perceive any discrimination?
No, I did not feel anything like that. But, I think, it is understandable, if we think about the majority of the lecturers started to work at the university before WWII. We had outstanding lecturers.
First, I would mention Samu Borbély, professor of aerodynamics and rocket science, the full member of MTA (Hungarian Science Academy). He participated in the German and Russian rocket researches, of course, not on his free will, and, allegedly, the American rocket science reached success with his scientific results. He gave two-hour mathematics lectures, without making any mistake or wiping huge the board off at Aud Max, with very legible handwriting. Sometimes he looked at a small leaflet on the table, which once he forgot on the table after the lecture. His curious students had a look into the leaflet – it said: ’1 kg bread, 100 g butter.’
I also have fond memories of the Kossuth-prize professor László Heller. His worldwide known invention, the Heller-Forgó cooling tower can be recognised from its hyperboloid shape. It is widely spread in the world at such power plants and factories lacking the proper amount of cooling water.
Professor Heller always wore a suit with the appropriate colour for the weather with a pocket-handkerchief and had a good mood. He liked inserting some jokes during his lectures when the students started to tire. That time I was not married, so I used my maiden surname, which is Gerőfy. Once, at 8.15 AM I was eating my ’lángosh’ (traditional Hungarian dough bread, now usually sold on beaches – Ed.) at the cafeteria at the K building when professor Heller passed by me on the corridor. When he arrived in the lecture room, said, ’Good morning, ladies and Gentleman! Until Klára Gerőfy consumes her lángosh, let me tell you a joke.’ (He had an excellent facial recognition, and he knew the majority of the audience by name.)
I could list all of our other outstanding professors, László Gillemot, or Zoltán Lévay, who, besides their education role, made a world standard R&D work, and gained international recognition. Hungarian engineers are well-educated due to their efforts. These excellent professionals taught us to love our profession and did not involve political issues. At least, with us, they did not talk about their political preferences.
Of course, ideological courses were not neglected. We learnt political economy, Marxism-Leninism, and we were all members of KISZ (Kommunista Ifjúsági Szövetség, Hungarian Young Communist League). The KISZ college year leaders gave reports to the responsible people on the top, and the untrustworthy had to go. Some from my college year also emigrated because of that, making a career in Austria, West Germany, or overseas.
You started your career in Ózd (formal industrial city), first as an operating engineer, later as a high school teacher of engineering. Ózd could be ideal for a mechanical engineer in the era of extensive industrialisation. But how did you like working in a very different environment after being born and having education in Budapest?
The environment was familiar because from 1948 until 1957, we have already lived in Ózd. My father, who intended to be an eye-specialist in Budapest, but right after getting his degree in medicine, in 1937, he was enrolled to the army, and as a medical officer, got an internal medicine education. He survived the tragic battle of the Don Bend, but on the way back, he got into custody as a POW, and our Budapest apartment was bombed out. After he arrived back home, he was invited to the newly built county hospital of Ózd, to create and manage the hospital laboratory. We even got an apartment, although it was infrequent that time since in the WWII massive amount of families lost their apartment.
I liked living in Ózd. That time, children in Ózd could study almost anything for free. I went swimming in the factory swimming pool, where an excellent trainer trained us and made us took part in national competitions. At a particular time, I attained gymnastics classes, later orienteering. We got a jogging outfit and nailed shoes for free, and we just ran around the local hills. I attended the Factory School of Ózd, where the Rimamurány-Salgótarjáni Rt (predecessor of the Ózd Metallurgic Works) gathered outstanding education staff before WWII. And I also attainted the Fine Arts Group for free, led by the double Munkácsy-prize Ernő Kunt and the excellent aquarellist Sándor Szabó.
The Ózd Metallurgic Works lied in the middle of a broad valley, and residential houses were next to the factory, also like the school. So the permanent rutting, whistling and clashing noises of the factory could be heard in the classrooms, but also the apartments. These were parts of our life. Every 6 AM, 2 PM and 10 PM a loud horn was blown, signing the start of the shifts.
After getting my degree, professor Lévai invited me to be an assistant lecturer to the Department of Heat Power Plants, where I was a demonstrator earlier. But, instead, I rather got married to my fiancée from Ózd, whom we met in my high school years, in the Fine Arts Group. He was already an engineer in Ózd that time he graduated in the Miskolc University of Heavy Industries (its current name is Miskolc University).
My job in Ózd was an operating engineer in the boiler department. In the noisy, hot boiler rooms there were apartment block-sized old, coal-fired boilers, with a great many problems. I liked them, but soon, I became pregnant, and I had to realise (as my colleagues warned me earlier), that it is not an appropriate job for women. So I was invited to the high school, where I studied before, and where the vocational school education just has begun. I became a teacher of engineering, teaching instrumentation and drawings. I liked teaching because all the sons of the factory blue-collar workers intended to study in a vocational school, and because of the number of applicants, only the best could enrol. They were disciplined and diligent. I met some of them later when I was a university lecturer.
How did you get to the Department of Precision and Optics of BME?
In 1967 my husband was transferred to Budapest, to the Institute of Sustainable Energy, founded by professor László Heller, whom I told that story about him, mentioning my absence from the beginning of the class. My husband’s role was to design recovery boilers. Professor Heller only called my husband as ’the husband of Klára Gerőfy’. I was at maternity leave that time, so I moved back to Budapest with him. Only in brackets, but that was a time where housing was a problematic issue. In Budapest, only the Budapest residents could buy a flat. And also, we did not have the proper financial condition. But we managed to find an apartment building construction, due to an aunt in Budapest. We found a cheap opportunity, and the entry fee was 20.000 Ft (converted in today’s forint, around 2 000 000 Ft (about 6000 USD), and we managed to get a loan for 2%, for 20 years.
Around the end of my maternity leave, I visited professor András Lévai, and told him, that now I would have taken the opportunity to work at the Department of Heat Power Plants. Lévai said that he was very sorry, but there is no job vacancy anymore, but I should write a CV for HR if there is going to be a vacancy in another Department. I thought it was a kind rejection, but still, I issued my CV to the HR Department of the university. Almost just a month after, I received a telegram, that I should visit Olivér Petrik, head of the Department of Precision and Optics. I visited him at the appointed time. Olivér Petrik, Zoltán Túri associate professor, deputy head of department, and József Filemon were present. They interviewed about various topics, and I was hired for a 3-month temporary contract, for the vacancy due to Zoltán Kaposvári, who was in the Soviet Union at that time, to do research. I started on 1 Oct 1969 at the Department, attached to Zoltán Túri, who taught optics. Besides studying the details of optics, my role was to take part in the practical training in optics.
What have you investigated before your sight correction researches?
That time, between 1957 and 1990, factories had to spend a certain percentage of factory profit on R&D projects. As the heads and deputies of our department had extensive relations with the management of the Hungarian precision and optics firms, we were involved in several exciting projects.
The transition period in 1989/1990 brought economic difficulties, severely affecting our principals the state-owned large enterprises. For instance, Finommechanikai Vállalat (FMV, Precision Company) was shut down in 1990, the Gamma Művek (GM, Gamma Works) in 1993, the Magyar Optikai Műveket (MOM, Hungarian Optics Works) was even demolished in 1997, and VIDEOTON was bought out in 1991. The former engineers founded enterprises with the remained equipment of the factories wounded up, but we did not get significant research projects anymore from these enterprises. The foreign-owned large enterprises of today employ their research departments.
For me, the most fantastic research project was from the Nuclear Power Plant of Paks. It was a pleasure to see it under operation, inside, since we only knew about power plants from our university studies, on the lectures of professor András Lévai. Our task was to develop and construct the security instruments of nuclear power plants. For example, we developed such an optical observation system, which makes monitoring of the crane removing and replacing reactor lids possible from outside during maintenance or cleaning. The cranes were remotely controlled ones, so if there was something not exactly right on the map when the crane was moving, that could cause major incidence. Due to our observation instrument, the staff can see potential obstacles from outside.
Another large-scale project of ours was given by MOL (oil company with HQ in Hungary, the successor of the national oil company). To measure the volume of the oil storages of the company, which could reach 80.000 m3, we developed a specific method, which shortened the duration time of examination from 1 month to 3 days. Moreover, it was much more precise than the earlier measurements. In the optical focus of the near-spherical body optical, we set up an automatic laser telemeter to an automatic theodolite stand. The telemeter, according to a computer programme we wrote before, the 3D data of the oil storage walls were scanned with grid points. From the results, we calculated the exact shape of the oil storage with finite element method, before calculating the volume.
These oil storages do not have a perfect shape. There are smaller dents and bulges, and these unpunctualities make beautiful sound effects possible inside. If we step in the middle and say a word, it echoes from each direction. But the returned voice does not stop but continue its way towards the wall in front, and vice versa. During, due to the wall rubs, it becomes blurred, and in the end, it is like a quiet noise, and even though, it remarkably carries your voice characteristics.
Were there any colour-blinds in your family or environment?
No, I did not even know, that colour blindness does exist at all. That time only some had cars, so only some’s sight was examined.
The idea of your colour correction glasses came from a project of yours at the Kecskemét Cannery.
The first industrial project I could take part was the development and construction of two pieces of a tomato colour examining instrument. Three of us, professor Nándor Bárány, the department’s founder, György Ábrahám (who started his work at that time as a lecturer), and I, were taking part in the design.
According to the standard method of tomato colour examining instrument, we had to cut Munsell colour reference sheets 100 mm diameter circles, cut along a radius, in fan-shaped strang, and turn around in a concentric axle. The turning speed should be faster than the fusion frequency, so the sectors with various colours should blur in one for the human sight. And next to this, comes the planed surface tomato puree. To the rigger, we put four coloured sheets, an orange (coloured like an unripened tomato), a dark red (coloured like a tomato slightly burnt), a black and a grey. The coloured sheets stitched stirring axle should be adjusted that the colour mixture should match the colour of the tomato puree. If they did not match, we had to stop the spin and modify the colours, until they match. Then the mixture of the component colours should be read on the perimeter of the rigger – that four numbers make up the colour of the tomato puree.
This method seems primitive but could fulfil the practise, since the tomato puree colour is also judged visually by the customers, and these four colours matched to the production technology.
Despite, this method had more disadvantages, mostly its slow speed. The multiple stops, the adjustment of the disks, restarting the spin took a lot of time. In the meantime, the colour of the puree could change because of drying and ageing. Also, the coloured reference sheets abrased and polluted.
Professor Bárány developed a spirited optical method to avoid these errors, so the coloured sectors did not have to be span, but above them, a prism optical system could span, which, moreover, enables to have a vision to the tomato colour in a spit edged field of view, right next to the mixture of reference colours. So he made the visual comparison easier and more precise.
The illumination of the reference colour sheets and the tomato colours was inside the case. It had to avoid blinking because optical interferences can occur with the spinning mirror system in some frequencies.
During these researches, we noticed that we cannot always execute the colour adjustment in the same quality. First, we were thinking about instrument or recalibration errors, but later we realised that the staff itself could not perceive colour difference on the same level. This time, we started to pay attention to the colour-blindness with my colleague György Ábrahám.
How many types of colour blindness can we distinguish?
There are three kinds of receptors which sense colours (protos, deuteros and tritos), so our sight is trichromatic. The 95 per cent of the population is trichromatic, so able to see in a regular way, while the majority of the rest is anomal trichromatic, with six subtypes. The more severe three are commonly referred to as colour blindness, but they have all three receptors, but their operation is very different. In real colour blindnesses, at least one receptor is missing. It is called dichromacy when several colour tones can be distinguished, but their colour perception is much weaker. It is a rare disease, a one-ten thousandth part of the population.
In the most severe case of colour blindness is monochromacy, which only enables to see the world in the tones of black, grey and white. It is still not the worst, as before coloured photography every photo was like this, and they were still useable and pleasant. The worst is, when someone lacks all the three daylight receptors and using the night receptors also in the daylight, which is too strong for them, they need especially strong sunglasses. In Hungary, there are only 100-150 people like this.
Our goal was the correction of the most common form of colour blindness, the red-green trichromacy (protanomaly and deuteranomaly), and we were the first to do it on the globe.
What is the scientific background of the glasses helping people with dyslexia?
Dyslexia (difficulties in reading), and its relatives, dysgraphia and dyscalculia (challenges in writing and calculation), is a problem appearing in early ages. Mostly it seems due to harms or anoxic situations around birth, or premature birth. We know very little about the disease, rather the symptoms are known, but also complicated.
The glasses for treating symptoms of dyslexia works due to observations. Special needs teachers noticed that children with dyslexia could read better if the text is covered with a coloured foil. Dr Judit Pálfia ophthalmologist was making researches in the topic, and her results made me develop coloured glasses instead of foils.
You mentioned that you were keen on painting. Do you still paint?
Unfortunately, now I do not have the proper time for that. But I like taking photographs instead, about interesting faces.
We wish good health and further successful research!
László Benesóczky
Photo credits: MOGI, Colorlite
(Originally published at the page of BME Faculty of Mechanical Engineering.)
Photo credits: MOGI, Colorlite
(Originally published at the page of BME Faculty of Mechanical Engineering.)
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