The first who should be mentioned in this respectably large company is the anonymous inventor of the carriage. Few people know that the first four-wheel sprung carriage was crafted in Kócs, a small village in Komárom county at the turn of the 14th century. Unlike the usual carts of that time, this carriage was suspended on vertical straps and later on springs. The Hungarian word for the carriage kocsi from the name of the village Kócs, has spread all over the world and been adopted by many languages such as English (coach), German (Kutsche) or French (coche).
Another major Hungarian contribution to the convenience of medieval transportation was the invention of the hintó or landau. The basic mechanics of vehicles had not changed significantly throughout classical times and the Middle Ages. The body was rigidly built on axles, which could not turn when the direction was changed; therefore the carriage often overturned. Matthias, the great renaissance king of Hungary, who travelled almost constantly, had strong and flexible wooden stays fixed vertically to the front and rear axles and had the carriage body suspended on these in such a way that it did not touch the rigid undercarriage but reacted to the jolts of the vehicle with a swaying movement. To make travelling more comfortable, the carriage was lined with leather cushions. This new type of vehicle, the Hungarian hintó soon became very popular all over Europe. In the 17th century the wooden stays were replaced with forged steel springs, but the original suspending mechanism has remained unchanged up to now.
Another Hungarian first was the construction of the European continent's first tunnel tramway, built in Budapest between 1894 and 1896. Originally a "normal" tramway was designed to run along Andrássy út, one of the capital's thoroughfares, but the city authorities afraid that the noise of the tramway would disturb the squeamish public of the elegant, two-kilometre-long boulevard, insisted on building the tramway below the street. This is how one of the most up to date transport systems of the late 19th century was conceived.
Antal Bernhard (19th century) was an inventor in Pécs who designed and built the first steamship on the Danube. Only a decade after the introduction of Fulton´s steamship, Bernhard designed his own which made her maiden voyage in March, 1817. His next ship the Carolina travelled the distance between Vienna and Pozsony (today Bratislava, Slovakia) in three hours.
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