Simon Géza Gábor: „Csillogó fekete lemezeken…” 100 éves a magyar hanglemezgyártás és -forgalmazás (Budapest, 2008)

The history of Hungarian sound recording had already begun in the early days of Edison. Ethnographer Béla Vikár for example first made his folk songs phonograph recordings at Christmas 1896 in Borsod County; this was unique in Europe. In the course of his collecting he recorded several thousand songs. Following the introduction of the roll made of extremely delicate material and the difficult to use phonograph with its recordings of barely two minutes the technical novelty of first oneand then two-sided flat gramophone records with one or two three-minute playing time became much more attractive to both the curious and to buyers. The fact that they were more easily copied contributed to the coming into existence of sound recording, production and/or retail factories/outlets in the first years of the twentieth century in the larger towns and cities of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. The handcraft nature of these beginnings developed only gradually into a more industrial process. Alongside the foreign companies/manufacturers/dealers Hungarian dreamers also entered the sphere of this new medium. Our exhibition follows the Hungarian sound industry from its beginnings to the present day, looking primarily at the record labels with those businesses that created, copied and sold the sound recordings.