The Hungarian parliament goes on vacation and the IMF visits Hungary
Although Hungarian politicians claim that there will be no real lull in governmental and political activity during the summer, parliament had its last session yesterday.
Some of the highlights: János Veres’s five-minute report on the economic developments of the first six months of the year. He naturally blamed Viktor Orbán’s ill-conceived and irresponsible announcement about the restructuring of Hungary’s debt load for the large drop in the value of the forint on Friday. As I mentioned in my letter to the blog, since Monday morning the forint has risen steadily against the euro. Other speeches of interest were those of Tibor Navracsics, Ferenc Gyurcsány, and Gábor Fodor.
I especially enjoy watching the faces of politicians when they are listening to their colleagues…
Read the entire article: The Hungarian parliament goes on vacation and the IMF visits Hungary »
politics, IMF, Viktor Orban, parliament session
High Expectations – Low Involvement
Should there be more cooperation, communication and interaction between parents and school?
Students usually enter and graduate from school with high expectations set by their parents. Parents inquire about the curriculum, academic standards, class sizes, teacher qualifications, Read more »
Public Behavior, Courtesy
The Hungarians are a very courteous and polite people. This is very pleasant and also reminds me of my own Latin heritage, where courtesy, and how one treats others in public is very important.
Hungarians use two words which do not directly translate into English for how one treats other people; Read more »
TIVADAR PUSKÁS – invented the predecessor of radio
September 17th, 1844, Pest – March 16th, 1893, Budapest
Tivadar Puskás invented the telephone exchange and the telephone newsreader, the predecessor of the wired radio.
In the legend, Tivadar Puskás said “hallo” into the telephone receiver for the first time on April 2, 1878, or rather he said “hallom” (that is to say “I hear” in Hungarian), so the world “HALLO” originated from this Hungarian word. It was the first long-distance call, which was established between Puskás and Edison having overcame the distance of 107 miles between New York and Philadelphia.
Puskás also built Europe’s first telephone exchange in 1879. In Budapest, the world’s fourth exchange commenced operating in 1881.
Puskás received his higher education in Theresianum, then at the Technical University in Vienna. However, he was not able to complete his studies due to his father’s death. Later he undertook work in London and in Transylvania, and then he traveled to the United States and made some business. In 1876 Puskás returned to Europe for a short time, and began to build the telegraph network in London and Brussels. His concept was to create a telegraph apparatus that on its switchboard the lines of the factories and offices in the city could be connected to it and to each other, as well. However, the idea was considered too expensive.
Having heard that A.G. Bell presented his new invention, the telephone, Puskás traveled there at once, and realized that he should build a telephone exchange.
He visited and convinced Edison that the telephone is a novel device which needed to be made available to the public. From the autumn of 1876 to the summer of 1877 Puskás worked with Edison on the idea of the telephone exchange at the Edison’s laboratory in Menlo Park.
In the summer of 1877, Puskás as Edison’s European agent moved to London and in 1878 to Paris, where he directed the installation of the first telephone network and exchange. In October 1879 Tivadar Puskás became a member of the board of directors in the Edison Company.
Meanwhile, Puskás trained his brother, Ferenc, who with Edison’s consent, obtained exclusive rights to build telephone exchanges on the territory of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The two brothers returned home and began to install a telephone exchange in Budapest, which started to operate with twenty five subscribers on May 1st, 1881 as the sixth telephone exchange in Europe. Three months after opening the first exchange Puskás set up the second one, then, by setting up another one in Buda the number of telephone exchanges in Budapest increased up to three.
In 1881 at the World Fair in Paris Puskás presented Jumbo, a giant 27-ton dynamo of Edison’s company, the phonograph and electric lighting. Jumbo supplied electricity to 1,000-1,200 light bulbs with tremendous success.
Puskás was also interested in the telephone newsreader, i.e. the idea of transmission to several stations at the same time.
When on the exhibition Puskás has shown the General Telephone Company of Paris he organized the first “live broadcast”. He broadcast a performance from the Paris Opera to a room at the exhibition where 16 listeners were able to hear the performance on earphones.
On February 14th, 1882, at the spring festival organized in the building of the Vigadó (Municipal Concert Hall) of Pest Puskás broadcasted Erkel’s opera “László Hunyadi” from the National Theatre through his “songtelephone”. At this time only a limited number of listeners could enjoy the broadcast. In order to make it possible to listen to it on innumerable receivers at the same time, the sound had to be amplified. Puskás’s sound multiplicator, a forerunner of today’s amplifying valve served for this purpose.
After several unsuccessful businesses Tivadar Puskás, poor and ill, returned to Budapest, where, the Budapest Telephone Company, Puskás Tivadar and Co. almost went bankrupt. Fortunately the Minister of Industry and Trade who comprehended the potentialities of the telephone, took the telephone network into public ownership, and rented it to Puskás. Further enhancement, therefore, was supported by the state.
After Puskás founded the telephone exchange of the city of Budapest, he invented the forerunner of the radio, the telephone broadcaster. On February 15th, 1893, for the first time in the world, the telephone newsreader began to broadcast in Budapest, Hungary. In the first period the telephone newsreader did not have independent wires, the subscribers requested connection from the telephone exchange and they could listen to permanent broadcasting from 9 in the morning till 9 in the evening on the telephone. Later individual wires were laid down for the telephone newsreader.
This is how W. B. Forster Bovill writes about it in Hungary and the Hungarians, (1908, pages 111-112):
“You may be seated as I was in the reading-room of one of the hotels, or in a large coffee-house, when suddenly a rush is made for a telephone-looking instrument which hangs from the wall. In time perhaps you will become one of these “rushers.” It is the Telephon Hirmondo, a kind of newspaper which telephones its news instead of printing it. Budapest is the only city in the world which possesses such an instrument. All day long a clear-toned elocutionist announces news just as it arrives, it commences in the morning at nine by sending the correct time, which is repeated every hour. At twelve o’clock the news of the day, home and abroad, is sent out to thousands of homes, etc. Sometimes a raconteur will make the luncheon hour pass easily by telling a few good stories. The latest rise and fall “on ‘Change,” programme of events, meetings, Parliament, horseraces, these are a few of the items one may receive. From 4.30 to 6.30 one may listen to a famous Honvéd military band, and after seven in the evening, for five nights of the week, the subscriber sitting at home may listen to grand opera. On the two remaining evenings the strains of a gipsy band coming from a distant café adds to the enjoyment. The Magyar loves pleasure.”
Today’s wired radios are based on the structural elements of Tivadar Puskás’s telephone newsreader.
A month later the telephone newsreader broadcast (telephonograph) released the sad news that Tivadar Puskás died of heart attack, at the age of 49.
Tivadar Puskas, telephone newsreader, telephone exchange, radio, inventor, Edison, Bell, telephonograph, songtelephone
Hofstede’s Dimensions of National Cultures
Cultural differences manifest themselves in a culture’s choices of symbols, heroes/heroines, rituals, and values: essential patterns of thinking, feeling and acting that are well-established by late childhood. Read more »
LEO SZILARD – Physicist, biophysicist, nuclear scientist
February 11, 1898, Budapest – May 30, 1964, La Jolla, CA
Physicist, biophysicist, nuclear scientist
Leo Szilard (Leó Szilárd) received his PhD in Berlin, and for a time worked alongside Einstein. After Hitler came to power, he moved to Vienna, London, and finally, the United States. In 1939, together with Enrico Fermi, he began studying ways to achieve uranium fission, and then helped create the first nuclear reactor. Fermi and Szilard patented the nuclear reactor, but after the war they sold the patent to the United States of America for a symbolic one dollar.
While still in Berlin Szilard wrote an article on the relationship between information theory and thermodynamic entropy, which, today, is the foundation of information theory and brain research.
In the hope that it could be used against Hitler, in 1939 Szilard, together with Fermi, Eugene Wigner, Einstein and Edward Teller, wrote a letter to U.S. President Roosevelt on the possibility of using uranium fission as a military weapon. The U.S. government initiated the Manhattan Project, which was aimed at creating an atomic bomb. After World War II ended, Szilard and Einstein warned the U.S. government that there was no need to use the bomb, and called on U.S. and Soviet scientists to cooperate to prevent an arms race. At this time, he began applying methods of physics research to biology.
When he taught in Chicago and California, it was as a professor of biology. He is often described as the creator of biophysics.
In 1960, he received the Ford Foundation’s Atoms for Peace Award for efforts in the peaceful use of atomic energy.
Leo Szilard (Leó Szilárd), physicist, biophysicist, nuclear scientist, nuclear reactor, information theory, brain research, biophysics, use of atomic energy
Presentation Styles & Challenges
In what way should presentations and seminars in Hungary be different from those in the US? In America, you usually talk for ten minutes and then start everyone in an exercise. In Budapest, however, if you don’t give your Hungarian audience a 40 minute background of history, philosophy, and theory, they will think what you are about to say is probably not established. Read more »
Verbal Behavior
Hungarians are almost always less direct than North Americans, and depend on nuances of meaning in many cases. Humor, sometimes sarcastic, may be used to convey a message. Read more »
Formality, Status & Hierarchy
Hungarians are more formal than Danes, Australians or North Americans – more like the French and Germans, for instance. Read more »
Hungarian Public Television
Hungarian Public Television (Magyar Televízió = MTV) is not exactly a haven for high-brow programs. It’s just like all the other television stations that vie for viewers and through them for more advertising revenue. Although I know that in Europe life cannot be imagined without publicly funded television stations, one has the distinct feeling that the rationale for these public television stations is fading in our modern world. It is impossible to cram everything that the public “should be interested in” within one station: operas, concerts, theater, history, documentaries, movies, literature, religion (all denominations), cooking shows, news, sports, political discussions. Should I continue? Theme channels now dominate cable TV in the United States: entertainment, history, music, do-it-yourself, cooking, sports (including one dedicated to golf), and politics. Just to mention a few. With the introduction of digital television such a thematic solution is easily attainable in Hungary; if I recall, a few years ago, during the contest for the position of president of MTV, Sándor Friderikusz’s proposal actually contained the novel idea of making four or six channels out of MTV, each devoted to a specific topic that would draw targeted audiences. In my opinion no public television station can today compete with the plethora of channels catering to specific audiences. Thirty years ago in the United States the appearance of National Public Television was an oasis in the desert for those, like myself, who weren’t too thrilled with Mr. Ed or the Beverly Hillbillies. Today there are still some excellent programs such as Masterpiece [formerly Masterpiece Theater], the American Experience, Frontline, and Nova, but the general level of evening and weekend programming has deteriorated. (Daytime programming is dedicated to children’s shows.) The fifth time–actually, probably the tenth time–around the same “Keeping Up Appearances” is not exactly on the Tivo “to do” list.
But let’s go back to MTV and the constant trouble there. Most people I know tell me that they hardly ever watch MTV with the possible exception of the late evening political program, Az Este, and on Sundays A Szólás Szabadsága, especially if there are interesting guests. With the populace at large the early morning political show, Napkelte, is also quite popular, but apparently the real winners are quiz shows and light entertainment: Örökös, A Társulat, and Csináljunk Fesztivált. I discovered a few Hungarian-made soaps that were predictably boring (though apparently it doesn’t take long before people become soap-opera addicts), and I found a murder mystery that wasn’t exactly captivating but watchable.
MTV is not so much a producer as a disseminator of content; it produces only 30% of what it airs. The only shows that are produced in house are Az Este, A Szólás Szabadsága, Híradó, and the religious programs. All the others are purchased from outside studios.
Budapest Cafe Culture
By 1880, Budapest alone had over 600 cafes, more cafes than any other European country with the exception of Paris. Budapest café culture has been alive and thriving to this day. Restaurants are places where you must wear a suit and tie, live up to class expectations or God-forbid, run in for a Big Mac (shudder). Read more »
