Tivadar Puskás de Ditró (in older English technical literature: Theodore Puskás) (17 September 1844 – 16 March 1893) was a Hungarian inventor,

telephone A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into e ...

pioneer, and inventor of the telephone exchange. He was also the founder of Telefon Hírmondó.

Biography

The Puskás family from Ditró (today

Harghita County Harghita (, hu, Hargita megye, ) is a county (județ) in the center of Romania, in eastern Transylvania, with the county seat at Miercurea Ciuc. Demographics 2002 census In 2002, Harghita County had a population of 326,222 and a populatio ...

Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Moldova to the east, and ...

), was part of the

Transylvanian Transylvania ( ro, Ardeal or ; hu, Erdély; german: Siebenbürgen) is a historical and cultural region in Central Europe, encompassing central Romania. To the east and south its natural border is the Carpathian Mountains, and to the west the A ...

Hungarian nobility. Puskás studied law and later engineering sciences. After living in England and working for the Warnin Railway Construction Company he returned to

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the ...

. In 1873, on the occasion of the World Exhibition in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

, he founded the Puskás Travel Agency, the fourth-oldest in the world and the first travel agency in

Central Europe Central Europe is an area of Europe between Western Europe and Eastern Europe, based on a common historical, social and cultural identity. The Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) between Catholicism and Protestantism significantly shaped the a ...

. After this, Puskás moved to

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and became a gold miner. It was while he was in America that Puskás exposed the American "energy machine" inventor

Keely As a surname: *Conrad Keely, American rock music singer *Dermot Keely, Irish professional football player and manager *John Ernst Worrell Keely (1827–1898), American inventor; invented the Keely Motor * Patrick Keely (fl. early 20th century), Am ...

as a fraud. Puskás was working on his idea for a

telegraph Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas p ...

exchange when Alexander Graham Bell invented the

. This led him to take a fresh look at his work and he decided to get in touch with the American inventor

Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventi ...

. Puskás now began to concentrate on perfecting his scheme to build a telephone exchange. According to Edison, ''"Tivadar Puskas was the first person to suggest the idea of a telephone exchange"''. The first experimental telephone exchange was based on the ideas of Puskás, and it was built by the Bell Telephone Company in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

in 1877. On March 11, 1878, Puskas demonstrated the first working Edison phonograph from the US (using tinfoil) to the French Academy of Sciences. It was generally successful although he was also accused of "ventriloquism." He was responsible for having it manufactured (in limited quantities) by E. Hardy of Paris. In 1879 Puskás set up a telephone exchange in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

, where he looked after Thomas Edison's European affairs for the next four years. In Paris he was greatly helped by his younger brother Ferenc Puskás (1848–1884), who later established the first telephone exchange in Pest. In 1887 he introduced the

multiplex Multiplex may refer to: * Multiplex (automobile), a former American car make * Multiplex (comics), a DC comic book supervillain * Multiplex (company), a global contracting and development company * Multiplex (assay), a biological assay which measu ...

switchboard, which was a revolutionary step in the further development of telephone exchanges.Francis S. Wagner: Hungarian Contributions to World Civilization - Page 68 His next invention was the "Telephone News Service" that he introduced in Pest, which announced news and "broadcast" programmes and was in many ways the forerunner of the radio. According to a contemporary scientific journal, at most 50 people could listen to Edison's telephone at the same time, if one more person was connected, none of the subscribers could hear anything. With Puskás's apparatus, by contrast, half a million people could clearly hear the programme coming from the exchange. In 1890, Puskás was granted a patent for a procedure for carrying out controlled explosions, which was the forerunner of modern techniques. He experimented with this technology when he was working on regulating the Lower Danube. Puskás registered the

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...

of technology behind the

telephone newspaper Telephone Newspapers, introduced in the 1890s, transmitted news and entertainment to subscribers over telephone lines. They were the first example of electronic broadcasting, although only a few were established, most commonly in European cities. T ...

Telefon Hírmondó in 1892, in the Patent Office of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with the title "A new method of organizing and fitting a telephone newspaper". The ''Telefon Hírmondó'' service started on 15 February 1893, with around 60 subscribers. After Puskás's death on 16 March 1893, his brother Albert Puskás sold the enterprise and the patent rights to István Popper. Tivadar Puskás did not win extensive public recognition during his lifetime. However, in 2008, the

Hungarian National Bank The Hungarian National Bank ( hu, Magyar Nemzeti Bank (MNB)) is the central bank of Hungary and as such part of the European System of Central Banks (ESCB). The Hungarian National Bank was established in 1924 and succeeded the Royal Hungarian St ...

issued a 1000 Forint commemorative coin in honor of Puskás and the 115th anniversary of the introduction of the ''Telefon Hírmondó''.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Puskas, Tivadar 1844 births 1893 deaths Hungarian inventors Hungarian scientists Hungarian electrical engineers Austro-Hungarian engineers Austro-Hungarian inventors People from Harghita County Burials at Kerepesi Cemetery