Engineer, national supervisor of public constructions, designer and executor of modern regulation of water in Banat County.
He was born in Orosháza (Békés county) on February 25, 1818, where his father György was a honorary doctor. He study in Szeged, Arad and Temesvár (today Timişoara, Romania).
He studied philosophy and engineering at the University in Pest. He furthered his studies as an engineer at the University of Vienna in 1841. From 1843 he had been working as an honorary engineer on the estates of baron Wodianer and count Mihály Eszterházy sr.
He published professional articles. After having read the articles, count István Széchenyi decided to hire him for the regulation of the Tisa River which started in 1846 and in 1847 he became the chief engineer of the department of the regulation of the Tisa River in Bács. Since he had fought in the revolution, he was degraded from chief engineer to assistant engineer. As a consequence, for 14 months he had been working in (today Košice, Slovakia) supervising the works of the road that lead to Galicia. In 1853 he was working as a chief engineer again. On the occasion of the first exhibition in London he travelled to Germany, the Nederland, France and England. In 1854 he also took the department of regulation of the Tisa River in Szeged (Csongrád County) over. In 1859 and 1864 he went to Italy to study irrigation methods. In 1867 in the Nederland’s studied polders (inner water conducting through constant water rising).
In this period the Ministry of War decided to drain the river flats in Titel and Banat County. In the spring of 1866 he was asked to make the designs for it (which would have meant two year’s of holiday), but he was also supervising the Regularisation of the 6th section of the River Tisa. He finished the designs in 1867, and in 1868 he was appointed water-work’s manager of the frontier zone. In the meanwhile he was a successful farmer and in 1867 he won the first prize for his wheat. In 1869 he put in charge of making the designs for the regularisation of the Rába and Rábcza rivers. In 1870 he went abroad to study irrigation and other water works in Switzerland and Germany.
In 1872 government commissioner count István Szapáry put Képessy in charge of making the designs for the flood-prevention in Banat County. This was going to be one of his most important designs. He realised very soon that his design was going to be successful only if he studied the river-system in Banat County and did on design for the whole area. As a chief engineer he put a larger technical group in charge of studying the water system in Banat County. Based on this study he made a large water regulating plan. Képessy made another design for transforming the Bega canal into a artificial canal with flood gates in order to be navigable from Temesvár to the Tisa River and to provide enough water for irrigations as well. The plan was assented by the Ministry of Transport and adopted by the newly founded Society of the Temes-Bega valley. Képessy made another design to make the Bega canal navigable from Temesvár to Tisa, and also the designs for the new submerged dam in Kastély (today Costei, Romania)and for the new food-gate in Topolovec (today Topolovăţ, Romania). The works – based on these designs – started in 1873 and were of epoch-making importance for the region. In 1873 he was appointed supervisor of public constructions.
The renowned expert, Endre Mokry wrote about him in 1880: „We have to acknowledge his engineering activity, which was of crucial importance for Banat County. He had to deal with problems caused by the lack of data and reliable precedents, with harassments and shortage of resources. As a consequence, such a large work does have flaws because he could not get into details, but we have to admit that it is a good design in which the situation of a great water system is recorded and presented in a brilliant way. Each proposal is well thought and it is based on correct technical theories and it is consequently carried out. He put together a vast material, based on which the Water-regulating society was founded and started its activity. It also represented a solid foundation in all directions for future designs and for correct water-regulations.”
He was also present in public life as the President of the Savings-Bank. His most important works were: A Magyar Alföld hydrographiája (The Hydrography of the Hungarian Plain) (Pest 1867) and Javaslat a Bánát közbenső vízhálózatának szabályozásáról (Proposal for the Regularisation of the Water-system in Banat County) (Temesvár 1873).
He died on October 25, 1876, while he was on an official supervisory trip in Temesvár.
