János Neuhold

John Neuhold has started building his company again many times. The founder of the telephone company has put his company on a firm footing after many attempts, minor successes and major failures.

Several encyclopaedias give János Neuhold's year of birth as around 1840, but his place of birth is not given. At his funeral in 1904, Sándor Benes, speaking on behalf of the factory workers, said that he was born in 1837 in Ruz, Sopron County. A book on the history of the factory, published in 1976 Telephone factory history dated his birth year to 1840, and gave his birthplace as Sopron. On his tombstone in the cemetery on Fiumei út, the year of birth is 1840. His father, also according to this book, was Dr. Ferenc Neuhold, a native of Stuttgart, who was a military doctor in the Austrian army and achieved the very high rank of general surgeon, the second highest rank that could be achieved by military doctors.

It is not surprising then that János Neuhold also chose a military career, in fact a career as a military engineer, according to his biography, he studied in Austria, at the military academy in Krems. As a young lieutenant he was in the battle of Solferino in 1859, and later he was wounded in the war in Schleswig-Holstein in 1865-1866, when he was sent to Pest.

The wounded officer fell in love with Maria Rampel, five years younger than him, in Pest, but the military regulations of the time meant that an officer could only marry if he paid a certain amount of money (a deposit). This was originally a pension fund for the officer or his widow, but by the middle of the 19th century it was only to ensure that the officer married from the right circles. (It is interesting to note that his father-in-law, József Rampel, was also a military officer, retiring as a captain.)

On 11 April 1868, the Hungarian Minister of Agriculture, Industry and Trade appointed Lieutenant-General János Neuhold as a first-class telegrapher.

The official history of Sándor Benes and the Telephone Factory in the memorial speech tells a different story about his later career, according to the memorial speech, he was employed by the Kassa-Oderberg Railway, where he worked as a telegraph inspector for many years. The official Telephone Factory history, however, says that on 29 April 1869 he joined the Post and Telegraph Directorate as a telegraph constructor, first class, and only joined the Kassa-Oderberg Railway in 1871.

He resigned from this position with the railway company in 1876 and opened an independent workshop in Stáció Street in Budapest, where 10-12 workers repaired railway telegraph machines. A few years later, in 1879, he employed 150 workers in Dohány Street.

Neuhold was successful with his products, railway telegraphs and bell signals at the national fair in 1885.

The plant was doing well, but the customers, the MÁV and the Postal Directorate, were paying their bills late, so Neuhold needed working capital. First he turned to the Hungarian General Credit Bank in 1891, but as he did not get a ministerial guarantee for the loan, despite the support of the Budapest Chamber of Commerce and Industry, he turned his factory into a joint-stock company.

However, the joint-stock company form could not stabilize the company's situation, and the general meeting of 24 March 1894 approved the reduction of the share capital and the sale of the factory, which was already located in Damjanich Street. The majority of the shares were transferred to Belgian hands and the name of Neuhold Railway Fittings and Electronic Machinery Works Ltd. was changed to Hungarian-Belgian Metal Industry Works Ltd. Neuhold did not want to cooperate with the new company, so he resigned from the management and left the company, with heavy financial losses.

Almost immediately, he started building up the company again as a general partnership, with his partner, his eldest son Géza Neuhold. He built up serious relations with the telephone factory Joseph Berliner & Jacob Berliner in Hanover, which acquired an increasing share in Neuhold's company, and in 1900 it was even bought, so that the Hungarian factory, under Neuhold's leadership, became the German company's Hungarian head office.

János Neuhold travelled to Hanover in 1904 to attend a meeting of the supervisory board of the Telephone Factory. The company was a success, and in 1904 it received a major order from MÁV. It was therefore unexpected when Neuhold fell ill and died at the supervisory board meeting in Hannover on 19 October 1904. János Neuhold had four children, Géza, Kornél, Ervin and Elza. Although Neuhold was a successful entrepreneur throughout his life, he did not accumulate any significant personal wealth, and his children and wife (who died in 1920) inherited only debts. The telephone factory - unofficially called the Telephone Factory, but so named from the turn of the century - was taken over by his son Kornél Neuhold, who joined the company in 1901.

In his farewell speech, Sándor Benes remembered him thus:

"Neuhold was a first-class capacity in railway equipment in our country. He brought much glory to our country's industry with his patents in this field. The telephone bell-indicating apparatus, which owes its creation to him, is in use not only on the domestic railways, but also on many foreign railways, and has attracted great attention everywhere. For many years Neuhold was a member and auditor of the Engineers' and Builders' Association and of the National Industrial Association, and was also very active in the life of the Association."

Literature:

• https://itf.njszt.hu/intezmeny/telefongyar
• Sarolta Czakó, Károly Jenei A Telephone factory history1876-1976.
• https://lazarbibi.blog.hu/2016/03/09/a_telefongyar_tortenete_i_resz