Postai és Távközlési Múzeumi Alapítvány Évkönyve, 1996

Rövid tartalmi összefoglaló angol nyelven

The museums

The growth of the collections

• The Postal Museum drew up a certified inventory of the collections of objects of postal history. Both the Foundation’s main museums received several loan requests for 1 lOOth-anniversary exhibitions, from the founders and from Budapest and provincial museums. These were mainly for letter boxes and smaller manual, local-battery telephone exchanges and hand-sets.

• The accession figures for the museums (numbers of items):

Stamp Museum

Hungarian stamp collection

104 118

Foreign stamp collections

34 190

Mixed collections

110 390

Stamp designs

121

Library

110

Postal Museum

Collection of objects

4 076

Collection of documents

2 673

Library

143

Important accessions

• Through donations and exchanges, the Stamp Museum obtained Mafitt’s memorial publications for the 1996 World Convention of Philatelic and Postal History, and items presented by Steven Arató (United States): a 3-krajcár stamp of 1874 with an engraving correction, and 141 stamps with an accompanying manuscript study. The Hungarian Post PLC bought three used postage items at the auction of the Ryan collection, loaning them permanently to the Museum: a newspaper stamp on a newspaper sleeve, a letter franked with an automatic stamp, and a postcard with 1871/1874 mixed postage payment. The Museum itself bought letters sent by pigeon post, 14 sketches (designs for stamps not issued), and three aerograms.

• The Postal Museum gained important additions to its telegraph and telecommunications collections when the wired laboratory at the István Széchenyi College in Győr and the instruction workshop at St Stephen’s Grammar School in Esztergom were discontinued. Microfilming of postal and telecommunications journals missing from the Museum’s collections continues at the National Széchényi Library. Several valuable maps and albums of postal history were received from the Transport Museum, which obtained them from the postal hall at the Millenary Exhibition in 1896.

Restoration, reconstruction and audio-visual aids

• The necessary preservation and the implementation of restoration plans were provisional in character, due to the congestion in the stores. However, all items placed on exhibition were restored.

• The building and interior of the post house at the Ópusztaszer National Historical Memorial Park underwent complete reconstruction, and received new displays. The

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