Postai és Távközlési Múzeumi Alapítvány Évkönyve, 2001
Tartalmi összefoglaló angol nyelven
Absence of Mass Radio. In it, he wrote that the issue had come up almost yearly since 1926 and implementation had always failed because of administrative obstacles, never because of the technical constraints. Although the ideas of 1926 and 1933 still might have been implemented in 1938, the post office technical staff was unable to put them into practice. It is believed that Magyari’s 1938 study did play a role in the fact that in 1939, the Hungarian Post Office ordered 20,000 radio receivers from the Orion, Standard, Philips, and Telefunken factories, which were marketed at fixed prices and made available for 24 monthly instalments. When exploring the history of postal-radio as a concept for disseminating radio sets among the public, it comes to mind that the story of this important piece of telecom equipment is quite similar to another important personal communication item, the personal computer. In Hungary today there are nine computers for every 100 households. The figure is even worse if projected to population numbers, for then we see that only 6% of the people have access to PCs. This is the situation in the nation where János Neumann, father of the computer was bom, and where the first computers were smuggled into the country in the 1980s. Neumann would be 100 years old in 2003, were he still alive. To mark his memory, it would be a good thing if hundreds of thousands of computers were made available to the public along the lines of the postal radio concept. Dr. László Molnár: Pál Varga’s Stamp Graphics Exhibit This study of stamps that offer an insight into events of past decades, focuses on three and a half decades of stamp design by graphic artist Pál Varga (1937-). When exploring the stamps and designs on display for a glimpse into past events, the events themselves and the way they were viewed at the time, come forward in the minute, colour compositions of the artist. These stamps are documents of an era, a surrounding world, and of the people within it. The stamp graphics signal and testify to a world of information, sketched out in the stamps issued by the Hungarian Post Office. The 35 years of work are impressive both for artistic quality and for the quantity of stamps and sheets. We must admire the fact that when interpreting various themes, the artist has created new forms of expression, new compositions, and a unique and original world of colour. He has created something else as well, an atmosphere which becomes tangible to viewers of his stamps. The exhibit of his collection and the current study were put together to mark the forthcoming 64,h birthday of the artist, offering an overview of the products of his mature, creative years, which make up over half of his life. There is no way to give a complete presentation or analysis of this oeuvre within the scope of this study. So, instead of trying to present the roughly 250 stamps, I have chosen to focus on significant turning points in his art, on single items of magnificence, and on creative intuition. I have considered it sufficient to present the main features of the different themes, and through this, I shall try to offer an evaluation. Pál Varga has won numerous domestic awards and his work has been acclaimed. He also deserves a great deal of credit for designs made for foreign postal services. That he 208
