Postai és Távközlési Múzeumi Alapítvány Évkönyve, 1997

Rövid tartalmi összefoglaló angol nyelven

select the best from so many good contestants, who clearly had substantive specialist- group activity and private study behind them.

The museum receives regular visits from schools. Several of those who come on such visits with their teachers later return with parents and friends, to look more closely at what interests them the most. In most cases they also make purchases of new stamps at the desk, presumably for their albums rather than their correspondence.

Mrs Gergely Kovács: Tea parties to conjure the past

‘Fifty years have passed since,’ wrote the great novelist Mór Jókai, in the introduction The March Youth, his memoir of the 1848 revolution. ‘Those bom in that year are old men already. A whole new generation has grown up behind them.... If any people of old still have something to say, they had better hurry up with it, while the sun still shines on their faces.’

The 20th century, with its world wars and revolutions, has probably left even more for those who lived through them (the people of old as Jókai calls them) to recount. Our idea was to bring out these memories, so that later generations can leam from them. The hopefully long-lasting series of afternoon events opened with some much-liked and respected colleagues. Around fifty people attended each gathering in the Telecommunications Development Institute next to the Postal Museum, where the writer of these lines acted as host, and the archivist was József Hajdú, who recorded the proceedings on video.

It is sad indeed to record as I write that the guests of honour in April, Károly Borsos and László Holló, are no longer with us. Both of them belonged to the 20th century’s great generation of engineers. They possessed a professional expertise, sense of vocation and moral approach that continue to influence us after their deaths.

Alexandra Halász: The classic US stamps of the last century

The first nationally valid postage stamps of the United States appeared 150 years ago, in 1847. However, it was not without antecedents. Postmasters had begun issuing stamps for local use in 1845, although they were only valid within the state concerned. The charges were uniform, but the designs varied. The fact that the postage had been paid was usually confirmed by the postmaster signing the stamp. These postmasters’ issues remained in circulation until the first general US issue. They are extremely rare today.

The first, nationally valid issue on August 5, 1847 came in two denominations. The five-cent brown showed the head of Benjamin Franklin, and the ten-cent black that of George Washington. Both were designed by Rawdon Wright, based on paintings by James B. Longacre and Gilbert Stewart respectively. Benjamin Franklin had been the first to hold the position of postal secretary in the United States. He and Washington have featured on countless American definitives since.

The next general (courier) issue came in 1851. It consisted of ten stamps, with several additions in subsequent years. One one-cent stamp shows the eagle of the American coat of arms, while the others bear portraits of Franklin and Presidents Washington and Jefferson. The range of US stamps increased again in 1861, when postmasters in the states of the Confederacy began to issue their own stamps again during the Civil War. These mainly simple, hand-stamped designs are great rarities too.

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