The ten largest Hungarian island on the Danube in 1878

MAGYARUL

I happened to came across the catholic priest and Hungarian Academy member Tivadar Ortvay's (Theodor Orthmayer) decription on the islands of the Danube. This article was published in the 15 th volume of the "Mathematikai és Természettudományi Közlemények" (Bulletin for Mathematics and Natural Sciences) in 1878. The relation of the shape, direction, area and the height of the banks of the Hungarian Danubian islands was written in the style of the mid 19th century geographical view, with a lot of  statistic descriptions. This article became obsolete almost in the moment it was published! It had been written before the large regulation works started on the Danube naming almost all (!) of the Danubian islands. This time islands still moved, changed their shape, direction, area and the height of their banks. Despite all, this work gives us a priceless snapshot on the state of the Danubian islands in 1878.

 
In this post we only discuss the most interesting part: the aspects of the islands area.

Spiritual landscape of the Danube in 1941

In year 1941, Hungary regained most of its old parts, like southern Slovakia, Subcarpathia, northern Transylvania and Vojvodina. The Hungarian High Commands took efforts to revise the old maps of these territories. This country-wide mapping project started with aerial photography of Hungary. These images were assembled into orthophotos and also received labels and geographic coordinate system. You can see the result here, although many prints have been destroyed during the second world war. The surviving prints can be found at the Institute and Museum of Military History, Budapest. Recently these maps were digitised, as a member of this project I found many traces of long lost danubian branches in these black and white images.

section 4859_2 A new lake will be born.