Page - 115 - in Nikola Tesla and the Graz Tech

115 Weitzer wagons went to Turkey and Egypt, to India and Java, to China and Australia. Tram sets were also produced. Since 1899 ‘Weitzer’ (later SGP, Graz works) has also been a centre of diesel engine construction. The company shaped the development of rolling stock for electric railways and created lasting constructions in this special field. Almost all electric trams and local trains in Austria and partly in Hungary were supplied from here with trams, trailers and electric locomotives. What Weitzer was for rail, Puch was for two and four wheelers. The factory founded by Johann Puch, a locksmith from Pettau/Ptuj, supplied its 100,000th bicycle as early as 1908, and eleven motorcycle models and 21 car types were produced by 1914. Johann Puch also supplied the engine for the first independently guided air- ship of the Danube Monarchy, with which the brothers Alexander and Anatol Renner took off at the 1909 Graz Autumn Fair. The new industries needed additional energy, be it coal, gas or water. But electricity also increasingly appeared as a form of energy, albeit initially for lighting. Graz proved to be backward in this respect, so that the social democratic newspaper ‘Arbeiterwille’ issued the following admonishment: ‘How many years have they [the inhabitants of Graz] had to endure scorn and ridicule over the lack of what hundreds of villages already possess: elec- tric light in adequate amounts.’ The city in which direct current had been distributed had become a current vacuum after 1900. Private electricity producers, like Viktor Franz in Gösting, settled outside the city. In 1903, a power station went into operation in Leb- ring, on the cataract section of the Mur, whose current was converted to a voltage of 200,000 V (20kV) by means of transformers for the first time in the monarchy and was therefore suitable for being supplied economically to the consumer centre Graz. But Graz was ignorant of technical progress when it came to sewage sys- tems. Since 1867 there was the barrel system for the disposal of faeces. The contents of the so-called barrel apparatuses were plunged into the Mur or giv- en to farmers. After the introduction of flush toilets, difficulties arose as the barrels were now filled much faster. So a sewer system seemed an absolute necessity. There was much discussion about it, but construction only began as late as 1925. In this respect, Graz was one of the most backward cities in the German-speaking area.