The Eighth Tribe, 1978 (5. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1978-04-01 / 4. szám
Page 12 THE EIGHTH TRIBE April, 1978 ical environment, the social presence, and the cultural contributions — that the place, the people, and the presentations all tied in together on the whole. M. Takacs Barboe Hungarian Firm will install Machinery for production of Light Bulbs in New Jersey A new plant in East Brunswick, New Jersey—the result of a unique joint business venture between an American merchandising firm and a Hungarian manufacturer—will soon start to produce several million light bulbs a year from machinery using natural gas supplied by PSE&G. The plant, built by Action Tungsram, Inc., a company jointly owned by Action industries, Inc., of Cheswick, Pennsylvania, and by United Incandescent Lamp and Electric Company, Limited, known as Tungsram, was originally scheduled for Pennsylvania. The East Brunswick building was to be used as a warehouse. When Action Tungsram’s management learned recently that PSE&G would be able to furnish gas at the New Jersey site, it decided to concentrate all operations in East Brunswick. The building was completed in January, and PSE&G started to hook up the new facility in February. The lightbulb manufacturing equipment — including the vital glass-forming machinery from Hungary, which must have gas to operate properly — is scheduled to be installed this spring. The initial one-line operation will create 55 new jobs. Future plans call for expansion to five lines and a sizeable increase in cmplovment. King Coloman the “Book Lover” The process of internal reconsolidation initiated by King Ladislas was continued by his nephew Coloman (1095-1116), who ruled Hungary for the next two decades. Coloman or Kálmán was a man of learning (hence his epitaph Könyves — Book Lover) ; and despite his physical shortcomings, he turned out to be a capable ruler. (The already cited Illustrated Chronicle describes him as follows: “Physically he was frail, ruffled, hairy, blear-eyed, humpbacked, lame and lisping, but he was shrewd and docile.” Képes krónika - 1971, 101.) The single measure that blackens his achievements as a ruler is the blinding of his brother, Álmos, and of the latter’s son, Béla. But even this act — far from uncommon in those days — must be viewed in light of Álmos’s frequent open rebellions against his brother, and in view of Coloman’s desire to pursue his predecessor’s policy in strengthening royal power and thus the unity of the state. Similarly to King Ladislas, Coloman was also a lawgiver. There are two separate law codes attached to his name. In looking at his laws, it is immediately evident that Coloman was much more of an innovator than Ladislas, and also that he was more “enlightened” than his predecessor. This is quite apparent both from his “humanization” of St. Ladislas’s severe punishments against theft, as well as from his declaration against the trial of alleged witches. (“Against witches, who do not exist, no proceedings should be conducted.” Lederer: Szöveggyűjtemény, 55.) Much has been made of this Paragraph No. 57 in Coloman’s Law No. I, and Magyar popular belief generally holds that King Coloman was the first ruler in history to proclaim the non-existence of witches. But this belief is misleading at least on two counts. On the one hand, we know of smilar declarations in a number of seventh and eighthcentury Longobard and Frankish law codes (Hóman: Magy. tört., I, 512.) ; on the other hand, this declaration by Coloman had virtually no impact on common beliefs and even on official practices in Hungary. In point of fact, the great age of witch hunts and witch trials was still in the future; and we know of massive witch burnings as late as the eighteenth century. (Schram; Boszorkányperek, l-II.) But this applies almost equally to all European countries, and even to the North American Colonies. 98 Allen L. Merken, president of Action Tungsram, says, “We believe this is the first such East- West company formed in the United States and the first major direct investment of this tvpe in U.S. industry by an eastern European company.” Action Industries, a distributor of hardware and household products, has been tbc U.S. importer of Tungsram light bulbs for a number of years. Tungsram, an 80-yearold company headquartered in Budapest, is ranked as one of the world's ten largest manufacturers of light bulbs.
