Postai és Távközlési Múzeumi Alapítvány Évkönyve, 1997
Rövid tartalmi összefoglaló angol nyelven
The most recent phase of development came with the various kinds of electronic teleprinter, which remain indispensable to the press, space travel and meteorology to this day. The subscriber teleprinter service known as telex dates from the 1940s. The telex subscribers are linked by an automatic exchange. Some post offices are also equipped with telex machines. This network is now used for the telegraph service as well. The revolution of 1848 deprived the Austrian government of the right to employ officials on Hungarian territory. It therefore disbanded the Pozsony telegraph office on June 12, 1848. The line from the border to the Pozsony station was offered to the Hungarian government on June 15. The Pest-Pozsony and Pest-Szolnok railway lines were expected to be completed shortly. It was thought that the railway company would need an electric telegraph system for safety reasons, and that this could be extended later to cover private telegrams. It was therefore proposed that the Hungarian government should set up the Royal Hungarian Telegraph in Pozsony. The imperial and royal minister of commerce, industry and public works informed the civil commissioner for Hungary on January 6, 1850 of his plans for a telegraph service between Pest and Pozsony, with four lines originating from Vienna. The route ran from Pozsony by way of Érsekújvár (Nővé Zámky), Esztergom and Vác to Pest. Telegraph offices opened in Zagreb on September 5, 1850, and in Pest on October 1. After that, the system developed rapidly. There were 60 main telegraph offices on Austro-Hungarian territory, of which 11 were in Hungary. Klára Pataki: What museums are for Few museum visitors these days associate the word museum with its original, broader meaning. A museum to the Greeks was the dwelling place of the Muses, the attendants of Apollo, on the grove-strewn slopes of Mount Helicon. The Muses taught people the arts, crafts and sciences, as many artistic and literary works recall over thousands of years. In recent centuries, museums containing public and private collections gather, guard, investigate and present to visitors creations that represent the universal heritage of mankind, so that they can be admired and used for instruction and self-improvement. Museums are the most authentic interpreters of human history, reflecting mankind’s image and linking people today with their past. Science, by exploring the items in museums, adds almost daily to our knowledge of our past and the lives of our forebears. It is not immaterial to individuals or to nations how much people are aware of all this. It has been a long road from the groves of the Muses to modern museums. The Muses have not always been honoured as they were in Antiquity and they are today. Beliefs, suppositions and ideologies, public opinion and the attitudes of the authorities varied from period to period. It was a long time before it was realized that today’s power can grow through possession of the past. According to historians specializing in museums, this took place in 1162, when the Roman Senate decreed that Trajan’s Column ‘shall be neither toppled nor shortened, but preserved until the end of time, to the honour of the Roman people.’ Museums today are public institutions, freely accessible to all, irrespective of whether they are in private or public ownership, because most privately owned museums receive 261
