United Incandescent Lamps and Electricity Ltd.
The age of dualism
After the Reunification, Hungary's industrialisation accelerated. The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy's monetary and customs union and the Hungarian government's autonomous powers in internal economic matters (e.g. industrial development laws from 1882) provided favourable preconditions for the development of industry. In order to secure access to the Hungarian market, several Austrian and Czech companies established branches in Hungary, among them the Mechanische Werkstätte und Telegraphen-Bauanstalt B. Egger in Vienna in 1872. The founder, Béla Bernát Egger Béla (1838-1910), was a locksmith who had emigrated from Óbuda and learned the basics of the rapidly developing electrical engineering industry by working for various European companies. In 1882, Béla Egger, together with the Budapest branch, transformed his telegraph workshop into a general partnership with the help of his brothers and Johann Kremenezky, another pioneer of the Austrian electrical engineering industry, under the name Erste österreichisch-ungarische Fabrik für elektrische Beleuchtung und Kraftübertragung, Egger, Kremenezky & Co. The Budapest factory grew rapidly under the leadership of József Pintér, Technical Director, and Gyula Egger, Commercial Director. In addition to telegraph equipment and repair, it expanded its portfolio to include the manufacture and installation of telephones and telephone exchanges, various electrotechnical articles, incandescent lamps and later railway safety equipment. In 1900, the company management replaced the cramped premises in the city centre with a building plot in the then independent, industrialising town of Újpest, where it relocated production in 1901.
The project pre-financing needed to participate in public tenders and the development of production required capital injections. The Egger brothers' factories in Vienna and Budapest with the participation of the Hungarian Commercial Bank of Pest and Niederösterreichische Esompte Gesellschaft of Vienna It was incorporated as a joint stock company under the name of United Electricity Co. in 1896. This is considered the founding date of Tungsram. In 1899, the Viennese company became an independent joint stock company under the name Vereinigte Elektrizitäts AG (VEAG). A portfolio-sharing agreement was made between the two companies: VEAG specialised in the high-voltage industry, United Electricity Ltd in low-voltage goods and the production of incandescent lamps; they mutually provided each other with their inventions and patents and held a share in each other's share capital.
In view of the dynamically developing Hungarian and imperial markets, and in the hope of similarly rapid economic development in the Balkan states, United Electricity Ltd. managed to conclude licensing agreements with leading companies in the industry (e.g. The company became a founding member of the first international incandescent lamp cartel (1903-1914), led by the two main German manufacturers AEG and Siemens, which regulated the carbon fibre incandescent lamp market, with a share approximately equal to that of the Dutch Philips.
The tungsten filament lamp patent, purchased from Sándor Just and Ferenc Hanaman of the Institute of Chemistry at the Vienna University of Technology, not only gave the company a first-to-market advantage with this product, but also allowed it to purchase key patents from William J. Coolidge and Irving Langmuir (General Electric, GE) through their German users. Thus, the company began manufacturing its lamps with drawn tungsten wire in 1912 and then launched gas-filled incandescent lamps in 1913. To underline the growing importance of the light bulb business the company changed its name in 1906 to United Lamps and Electricity Co. (United Glow for short). In 1909, the brand name Tungsram was registered, made up of the English and German equivalents of tungstenwhich became the trademark for the company's tungsten filament lamps and later for other products.
Tungsram was already exporting incandescent lamps worldwide before 1914. In addition to setting up sales offices, it also bought its first foreign production unit in Milan. The more profitable mechanical plant (telegraphs, telephones, railway safety equipment) worked mainly for the domestic and southern European markets. By 1914, Tungsram had become the most important manufacturer of the Hungarian low-current electrical engineering industry.
The First World War
Military supplies (e.g. hand grenades, primer shells) provided Tungsram with high profits, which the company managed well: it took significant steps towards a vertical production structure and the creation of a monopoly position in the domestic market, i.e. in Hungary and Austria. It bought two glass factories (1916 Magyar Üveggyári Művek Inwald József rt., Utekac and Újpest, 1921 Tokodi Glasgyár rt.), acquired an old competitor in the common market of the Monarchy, Watt AG in Vienna, in 1917, and concluded a market-sharing agreement with another major domestic competitor, Johann Kremenezky, who had incandescent lamp factories in Vienna and Budapest. Tungsram also granted itself the right of first refusal for the Budapest factory, the Hungarian Tungsten Lamp Factory Kremenezky János Rt, founded in 1913. The most important technological advance was the production of the first radio tubes for the army. One of the keys to their production was vacuum technology, which is why many incandescent lamp factories turned to this new field.
Between the two world wars
At the end of the First World War, the break-up of the Monarchy's customs and currency union, the significant reduction of the Kingdom of Hungary's territory and thus its consumption market and raw material reserves, the country's financial exhaustion and the difficult conditions for raising capital led to a transformation crisis. War losses, large foreign debts and reparations made it difficult to raise capital internally, and tight budgetary constraints also limited the state's ability to develop transport and communications infrastructure. Access to export markets was hampered by the politicisation of external relations and the decline in world trade volumes. Tungsram was one of a small group of Hungarian companies that successfully responded to changing market conditions, becoming the third largest incandescent lamp and radio tube manufacturer in continental Europe behind Philips and Germany's Osram/Telefunken.. The main elements of success were (1) the specialisation of production and the establishment of a full vertical production and distribution chain for the two key products, incandescent lamps and radio tubes, (2) the independent research laboratory and (3) the international networking.
One of the first major decisions of the new General Manager, the former head of the incandescent lamp division, Lipót Aschner (1921-1944), was the establishment of an independent research laboratory. Ignác Pfeifer, who was professor of chemistry at the University of Technology from 1912 to 1921, built up a team of outstanding scientists, engineers and technicians. From 1936 to 1937, the laboratory was headed by Zoltán Bay, Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Szeged (1932-1936), who also worked as Professor of Atomic Physics at the University of Szeged from 1938 to 1948. In addition to independent research, licensing agreements were the key to quickly overcoming the technological backlog caused by isolation during the First World War. Tungsram concluded and renewed licensing agreements with the leading companies in the electrical engineering industry (GE, IT&T, Philips and Osram/Telefunken) and each of these companies held a share of about 10 % in the company's capital. Through GE, Tungsram had in 1933 entered into a licence agreement with the leading American radio manufacturer, Radio Corporation of America (RCA). These relationships contributed to the success of Tungsram's laboratory, which was small by international standards, allowing certain development procedures to be shortened and resources to be concentrated. Key achievements of Tungsram's research laboratory included the development of high-crystalline tungsten fibre, which increased the resistance of filament filaments, the development of energy-efficient crypton filament lamps for decorative use, the economical extraction of crypton gas from air, and a number of processes that improved the quality of radio tubes.
In 1925, Tungsram transferred its railway fuse manufacturing profile to the Telephone Factory, which became part of its interests. In 1928, under pressure from the licensor Western Electric Co., which had meanwhile become a subsidiary of IT&T, it transformed its telegraph and telephone business into a separate company under the name Standard Electricity Co., in which it held a 49% share until 1934. In 1931 Tungsram acquired the Vienna and Budapest factories of its old competitor Johann Kremenezky. This made it the only incandescent lamp manufacturer in Hungary, and strengthened its radio tube production with the experience, brand names (e.g. Orion) and sales network of a renowned radio tube and apparatus manufacturer. For the production of krypton-filled incandescent lamps, Tungsram built a krypton factory in Ajka in 1936-1937, with a large-capacity coal-fired power plant. In order to counteract trade protectionism, which increased particularly during the world economic crisis, it set up incandescent lamp and radio tube factories (assembly plants) in its main consumer markets.
Organised in 1924, the GE-led new international light bulb cartelTungsram was able to participate in the creation of the rules that governed the operation of the market, e.g. (market sharing, prices, discounts), the marketing of new products and access to patents. In 1934/1936, Tungsram became a member of a radio tube cartel in the hope of similar advantages, dividing the world market area covered by the cartel between Philips and Telefunken on the one hand and Tungsram on the other, in a ratio of 88:12.
In 1937, Tungsram was ranked 5th and 4th respectively in the ranking of Hungarian companies listed on the stock exchange, in terms of balance sheet total and exchange rate value, given the company's dynamic growth and the fact that the most reliable items of Hungarian industrial exports, which brought convertible currency, were the incandescent lamp and the radio tube (or apparatus). On the eve of World War II, the Tungsram Group exported 90 % of its production, had independent sales representation in 18 countries, manufacturing units in 9 European countries, and accounted for approximately 5% of the world's incandescent lamp production. Its central production plant was one of the most important industrial employers in Újpest.
The Second World War and the transition period
Until the German occupation of Hungary, Tungsram's exports helped to supply the country with convertible currency. Under the leadership of Zoltán Bay, the radar technology developed at the Tungsram research the country's first radar installations was formed from the former telephone, telegraph and radio division of Tungsram in Standard Electricity Ltd in 1943-1944. On the day of the German occupation, Lipót Aschner was deported. Tungsram began preparations to supply the German army with radio tubes. Under the leadership of the new CEOs, Professor Zoltán Bay and Count Dénes Jankovich, Tungsram avoided the deportation of its production capacity to Germany and saved a significant part of its staff and machinery from the destruction of the Arrow Cross.
Tungsram's headquarters in Újpest survived the war without a bomb attack. In the spring of 1945 however, the Soviet army dismantled the factory. This financial loss of approximately USD 12 million was never included in the reparations. More than 500 employees of the company were victims of the war. Tungsram's factories in Eastern Europe were nationalised.
On February 6, 1946, the laboratory staff led by Zoltán Bay successfully sent radar signals to the Moon and picked up their echoes, just three weeks after a similar success by the US Navy. The lunar radar experiment played a key role in the birth of a new discipline, radar astronomy. In 1947, Tungsram's licence agreement with GE was renewed. However, due to the gradual integration of Hungary into the Soviet sphere of interest and the introduction of the plan-based economy, the licence agreement was not signed by the Hungarian National Bank, making it impossible for the company to catch up quickly with the technological development that had accelerated during the war. After the CEOs had fled abroad, Tungsram and the companies in which it had an interest were nationalised, although Tungsram remained formally a joint stock company.
1949-1989
In 1957, Tungsram regained its independent export rights and started to rebuild its sales network in Western Europe. Under CEO Béla Dienes (1962-1982), Tungsram was once again one of the world's leading manufacturers of light sources, and in the early 1980s, the world's production of light sources (incandescent lamps, halogen lamps, discharge lamps, fluorescent tubes) 3.5 - 4 %-average. More than 50% of its PV exports were sold in USD terms. The company has also set up new production branches. The rapid development of machinery production was forced by the need to replace the machines of the decommissioned factory in Újpest, followed by the unparalleled growth potential of the market in the KGST countries, which were implementing a vigorous electrification and industrialisation programme. From 1963, Tungsram's factory in Gyöngyös became the base for the mass production of semiconductor devices in Hungary, producing diodes, transistors and then integrated circuits. But by the early 1980s, Tungsram - like Hungary as a whole - was in serious crisis. The interest on investment loans for the expansion of capitalist exports, the costs of organisational inefficiency, the shifting market conditions and falling prices caused by the oil crisis, led to a heavy indebtedness, from which it could not recover, despite the organisational modernisation initiated under the leadership of Károly Demeter (1983-1985). In December 1989, General Electric acquired a majority stake in Tungsram rt., which had been a public limited company since 1984 and in which the Western European banking consortium led by Girozentrale had held a 49,651,3 billion tpy since April 1989.
After the regime change
After the reorganisation of Tungsram and the modernisation of its information system and production technology (e.g. halogen automotive lamps and compact fluorescent lamps), it soon became the European headquarters of GE Lighting (GEL). In response to the new era of lighting technology and the rise of LED technology, GEL's management approved a management buyout, whereby Tungsram Group took over GEL's lighting business in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Turkey and GE's global automotive lighting business as of April 3, 2018. The company, once again headquartered in Hungary and led by Jörg Bauer, wanted to break into the frontier of lighting technology (e.g. complete lighting systems, smart cities, vertical farms) and apply its technological knowledge and manufacturing capabilities to new areas (e.g. the use of tungsten wire for medical and other applications). However, the COVID, followed by the energy crisis and the war in Ukraine, broke the transformation. In May 2022, Tungsram filed for bankruptcy and is currently in liquidation.
Sources
* The Tungsram Collection of Factory History has been transferred to the Hungarian National Archives (central code XXIX-F-378), and its material is being sorted.
Zoltán Bay, Life is stronger. Csokonai, Debrecen/Budapest, 1990.
Hidvégi Mária, Connecting to the world market. Hungary's leading electrical engineering companies 1867-1949. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, 2016.
Mária Hidvégi, Network, Hierarchy, International Market Integration: the Participation of Tungsram in International Cartels, in György Kövér, Ágnes Pogány and Boglárka Weisz (eds.), Network and Hierarchy. Hungarian Economic History Yearbook 2020, Hajnal István Foundation/ Centre for Humanities Research, Budapest, 2020, 389-410. http://real.mtak.hu/118302/1/Gazd_t%C3%B6rt_2020_K%C3%96NYV_2020_10_15_online.pdf
Ákos Koroknai (ed.), History of Tungsram Ltd. 1896-1996. Aschner Lipót Foundation, Budapest, 2004. https://mek.oszk.hu/08700/08736/08736.pdf
György Kövér, Fifty Giants. Industrial company top lists in Hungary in the first half of the 20th century. Our past 12 (2000) 3, 86-122.
Tibor Prokob - Gábor Berkovics:Radar developments in Hungary during the Second World War under the direction of the Institute of Military Technology, https://haditechnikaiintezet.hu/prokob-tibor-berkovics-gabor-radarfejlesztesek-magyarorszagon-masodik-vilaghaboru-alatt
Endre Vajda (editor-in-chief), A Hungarian century of news technology. Híradástechnikai Tudományos Egyesület/MTESZ, Budapest, [1981].
Founded on 1 August 1896.
Termination time not set
Founders: the Pesti Hungarian Commercial Bank, Niederösterreichische Escompte Gesellschaft, Egger brothers
Decisive leaders:
1908-1921 | Jenő Szabó |
1922-1932 | Henrik Fellner |
1932. | Miksa Krassny |
1933-1941 | Fülöp Weisz |
1942-1944 | Dr. Lajos Walko |
Principal activity: manufacture of electrical equipment (incandescent lamps, telephones, electrical signalling equipment, railway safety equipment)
Main products are not set
Seats:
1908-1921 | Újpest Váci út 77. |
1922-1944 | Budapest V. Fürdő utca 5 |
Locations are not set
Main milestones are not set
Author: by Hidvégi Mária
Founded on 1 August 1896.
Founders: the Pesti Hungarian Commercial Bank, Niederösterreichische Escompte Gesellschaft, Egger brothers
Decisive leaders:
1908-1921 | Jenő Szabó |
1922-1932 | Henrik Fellner |
1932. | Miksa Krassny |
1933-1941 | Fülöp Weisz |
1942-1944 | Dr. Lajos Walko |
Principal activity: manufacture of electrical equipment (incandescent lamps, telephones, electrical signalling equipment, railway safety equipment)
Main products are not set
Seats:
1908-1921 | Újpest Váci út 77. |
1922-1944 | Budapest V. Fürdő utca 5 |
Locations are not set
Main milestones are not set
Author: by Hidvégi Mária
United Incandescent Lamps and Electricity Ltd.
The age of dualism
After the Reunification, Hungary's industrialisation accelerated. The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy's monetary and customs union and the Hungarian government's autonomous powers in internal economic matters (e.g. industrial development laws from 1882) provided favourable preconditions for the development of industry. In order to secure access to the Hungarian market, several Austrian and Czech companies established branches in Hungary, among them the Mechanische Werkstätte und Telegraphen-Bauanstalt B. Egger in Vienna in 1872. The founder, Béla Bernát Egger Béla (1838-1910), was a locksmith who had emigrated from Óbuda and learned the basics of the rapidly developing electrical engineering industry by working for various European companies. In 1882, Béla Egger, together with the Budapest branch, transformed his telegraph workshop into a general partnership with the help of his brothers and Johann Kremenezky, another pioneer of the Austrian electrical engineering industry, under the name Erste österreichisch-ungarische Fabrik für elektrische Beleuchtung und Kraftübertragung, Egger, Kremenezky & Co. The Budapest factory grew rapidly under the leadership of József Pintér, Technical Director, and Gyula Egger, Commercial Director. In addition to telegraph equipment and repair, it expanded its portfolio to include the manufacture and installation of telephones and telephone exchanges, various electrotechnical articles, incandescent lamps and later railway safety equipment. In 1900, the company management replaced the cramped premises in the city centre with a building plot in the then independent, industrialising town of Újpest, where it relocated production in 1901.
The project pre-financing needed to participate in public tenders and the development of production required capital injections. The Egger brothers' factories in Vienna and Budapest with the participation of the Hungarian Commercial Bank of Pest and Niederösterreichische Esompte Gesellschaft of Vienna It was incorporated as a joint stock company under the name of United Electricity Co. in 1896. This is considered the founding date of Tungsram. In 1899, the Viennese company became an independent joint stock company under the name Vereinigte Elektrizitäts AG (VEAG). A portfolio-sharing agreement was made between the two companies: VEAG specialised in the high-voltage industry, United Electricity Ltd in low-voltage goods and the production of incandescent lamps; they mutually provided each other with their inventions and patents and held a share in each other's share capital.
In view of the dynamically developing Hungarian and imperial markets, and in the hope of similarly rapid economic development in the Balkan states, United Electricity Ltd. managed to conclude licensing agreements with leading companies in the industry (e.g. The company became a founding member of the first international incandescent lamp cartel (1903-1914), led by the two main German manufacturers AEG and Siemens, which regulated the carbon fibre incandescent lamp market, with a share approximately equal to that of the Dutch Philips.
The tungsten filament lamp patent, purchased from Sándor Just and Ferenc Hanaman of the Institute of Chemistry at the Vienna University of Technology, not only gave the company a first-to-market advantage with this product, but also allowed it to purchase key patents from William J. Coolidge and Irving Langmuir (General Electric, GE) through their German users. Thus, the company began manufacturing its lamps with drawn tungsten wire in 1912 and then launched gas-filled incandescent lamps in 1913. To underline the growing importance of the light bulb business the company changed its name in 1906 to United Lamps and Electricity Co. (United Glow for short). In 1909, the brand name Tungsram was registered, made up of the English and German equivalents of tungstenwhich became the trademark for the company's tungsten filament lamps and later for other products.
Tungsram was already exporting incandescent lamps worldwide before 1914. In addition to setting up sales offices, it also bought its first foreign production unit in Milan. The more profitable mechanical plant (telegraphs, telephones, railway safety equipment) worked mainly for the domestic and southern European markets. By 1914, Tungsram had become the most important manufacturer of the Hungarian low-current electrical engineering industry.
The First World War
Military supplies (e.g. hand grenades, primer shells) provided Tungsram with high profits, which the company managed well: it took significant steps towards a vertical production structure and the creation of a monopoly position in the domestic market, i.e. in Hungary and Austria. It bought two glass factories (1916 Magyar Üveggyári Művek Inwald József rt., Utekac and Újpest, 1921 Tokodi Glasgyár rt.), acquired an old competitor in the common market of the Monarchy, Watt AG in Vienna, in 1917, and concluded a market-sharing agreement with another major domestic competitor, Johann Kremenezky, who had incandescent lamp factories in Vienna and Budapest. Tungsram also granted itself the right of first refusal for the Budapest factory, the Hungarian Tungsten Lamp Factory Kremenezky János Rt, founded in 1913. The most important technological advance was the production of the first radio tubes for the army. One of the keys to their production was vacuum technology, which is why many incandescent lamp factories turned to this new field.
Between the two world wars
At the end of the First World War, the break-up of the Monarchy's customs and currency union, the significant reduction of the Kingdom of Hungary's territory and thus its consumption market and raw material reserves, the country's financial exhaustion and the difficult conditions for raising capital led to a transformation crisis. War losses, large foreign debts and reparations made it difficult to raise capital internally, and tight budgetary constraints also limited the state's ability to develop transport and communications infrastructure. Access to export markets was hampered by the politicisation of external relations and the decline in world trade volumes. Tungsram was one of a small group of Hungarian companies that successfully responded to changing market conditions, becoming the third largest incandescent lamp and radio tube manufacturer in continental Europe behind Philips and Germany's Osram/Telefunken.. The main elements of success were (1) the specialisation of production and the establishment of a full vertical production and distribution chain for the two key products, incandescent lamps and radio tubes, (2) the independent research laboratory and (3) the international networking.
One of the first major decisions of the new General Manager, the former head of the incandescent lamp division, Lipót Aschner (1921-1944), was the establishment of an independent research laboratory. Ignác Pfeifer, who was professor of chemistry at the University of Technology from 1912 to 1921, built up a team of outstanding scientists, engineers and technicians. From 1936 to 1937, the laboratory was headed by Zoltán Bay, Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Szeged (1932-1936), who also worked as Professor of Atomic Physics at the University of Szeged from 1938 to 1948. In addition to independent research, licensing agreements were the key to quickly overcoming the technological backlog caused by isolation during the First World War. Tungsram concluded and renewed licensing agreements with the leading companies in the electrical engineering industry (GE, IT&T, Philips and Osram/Telefunken) and each of these companies held a share of about 10 % in the company's capital. Through GE, Tungsram had in 1933 entered into a licence agreement with the leading American radio manufacturer, Radio Corporation of America (RCA). These relationships contributed to the success of Tungsram's laboratory, which was small by international standards, allowing certain development procedures to be shortened and resources to be concentrated. Key achievements of Tungsram's research laboratory included the development of high-crystalline tungsten fibre, which increased the resistance of filament filaments, the development of energy-efficient crypton filament lamps for decorative use, the economical extraction of crypton gas from air, and a number of processes that improved the quality of radio tubes.
In 1925, Tungsram transferred its railway fuse manufacturing profile to the Telephone Factory, which became part of its interests. In 1928, under pressure from the licensor Western Electric Co., which had meanwhile become a subsidiary of IT&T, it transformed its telegraph and telephone business into a separate company under the name Standard Electricity Co., in which it held a 49% share until 1934. In 1931 Tungsram acquired the Vienna and Budapest factories of its old competitor Johann Kremenezky. This made it the only incandescent lamp manufacturer in Hungary, and strengthened its radio tube production with the experience, brand names (e.g. Orion) and sales network of a renowned radio tube and apparatus manufacturer. For the production of krypton-filled incandescent lamps, Tungsram built a krypton factory in Ajka in 1936-1937, with a large-capacity coal-fired power plant. In order to counteract trade protectionism, which increased particularly during the world economic crisis, it set up incandescent lamp and radio tube factories (assembly plants) in its main consumer markets.
Organised in 1924, the GE-led new international light bulb cartelTungsram was able to participate in the creation of the rules that governed the operation of the market, e.g. (market sharing, prices, discounts), the marketing of new products and access to patents. In 1934/1936, Tungsram became a member of a radio tube cartel in the hope of similar advantages, dividing the world market area covered by the cartel between Philips and Telefunken on the one hand and Tungsram on the other, in a ratio of 88:12.
In 1937, Tungsram was ranked 5th and 4th respectively in the ranking of Hungarian companies listed on the stock exchange, in terms of balance sheet total and exchange rate value, given the company's dynamic growth and the fact that the most reliable items of Hungarian industrial exports, which brought convertible currency, were the incandescent lamp and the radio tube (or apparatus). On the eve of World War II, the Tungsram Group exported 90 % of its production, had independent sales representation in 18 countries, manufacturing units in 9 European countries, and accounted for approximately 5% of the world's incandescent lamp production. Its central production plant was one of the most important industrial employers in Újpest.
The Second World War and the transition period
Until the German occupation of Hungary, Tungsram's exports helped to supply the country with convertible currency. Under the leadership of Zoltán Bay, the radar technology developed at the Tungsram research the country's first radar installations was formed from the former telephone, telegraph and radio division of Tungsram in Standard Electricity Ltd in 1943-1944. On the day of the German occupation, Lipót Aschner was deported. Tungsram began preparations to supply the German army with radio tubes. Under the leadership of the new CEOs, Professor Zoltán Bay and Count Dénes Jankovich, Tungsram avoided the deportation of its production capacity to Germany and saved a significant part of its staff and machinery from the destruction of the Arrow Cross.
Tungsram's headquarters in Újpest survived the war without a bomb attack. In the spring of 1945 however, the Soviet army dismantled the factory. This financial loss of approximately USD 12 million was never included in the reparations. More than 500 employees of the company were victims of the war. Tungsram's factories in Eastern Europe were nationalised.
On February 6, 1946, the laboratory staff led by Zoltán Bay successfully sent radar signals to the Moon and picked up their echoes, just three weeks after a similar success by the US Navy. The lunar radar experiment played a key role in the birth of a new discipline, radar astronomy. In 1947, Tungsram's licence agreement with GE was renewed. However, due to the gradual integration of Hungary into the Soviet sphere of interest and the introduction of the plan-based economy, the licence agreement was not signed by the Hungarian National Bank, making it impossible for the company to catch up quickly with the technological development that had accelerated during the war. After the CEOs had fled abroad, Tungsram and the companies in which it had an interest were nationalised, although Tungsram remained formally a joint stock company.
1949-1989
In 1957, Tungsram regained its independent export rights and started to rebuild its sales network in Western Europe. Under CEO Béla Dienes (1962-1982), Tungsram was once again one of the world's leading manufacturers of light sources, and in the early 1980s, the world's production of light sources (incandescent lamps, halogen lamps, discharge lamps, fluorescent tubes) 3.5 - 4 %-average. More than 50% of its PV exports were sold in USD terms. The company has also set up new production branches. The rapid development of machinery production was forced by the need to replace the machines of the decommissioned factory in Újpest, followed by the unparalleled growth potential of the market in the KGST countries, which were implementing a vigorous electrification and industrialisation programme. From 1963, Tungsram's factory in Gyöngyös became the base for the mass production of semiconductor devices in Hungary, producing diodes, transistors and then integrated circuits. But by the early 1980s, Tungsram - like Hungary as a whole - was in serious crisis. The interest on investment loans for the expansion of capitalist exports, the costs of organisational inefficiency, the shifting market conditions and falling prices caused by the oil crisis, led to a heavy indebtedness, from which it could not recover, despite the organisational modernisation initiated under the leadership of Károly Demeter (1983-1985). In December 1989, General Electric acquired a majority stake in Tungsram rt., which had been a public limited company since 1984 and in which the Western European banking consortium led by Girozentrale had held a 49,651,3 billion tpy since April 1989.
After the regime change
After the reorganisation of Tungsram and the modernisation of its information system and production technology (e.g. halogen automotive lamps and compact fluorescent lamps), it soon became the European headquarters of GE Lighting (GEL). In response to the new era of lighting technology and the rise of LED technology, GEL's management approved a management buyout, whereby Tungsram Group took over GEL's lighting business in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Turkey and GE's global automotive lighting business as of April 3, 2018. The company, once again headquartered in Hungary and led by Jörg Bauer, wanted to break into the frontier of lighting technology (e.g. complete lighting systems, smart cities, vertical farms) and apply its technological knowledge and manufacturing capabilities to new areas (e.g. the use of tungsten wire for medical and other applications). However, the COVID, followed by the energy crisis and the war in Ukraine, broke the transformation. In May 2022, Tungsram filed for bankruptcy and is currently in liquidation.
Sources
* The Tungsram Collection of Factory History has been transferred to the Hungarian National Archives (central code XXIX-F-378), and its material is being sorted.
Zoltán Bay, Life is stronger. Csokonai, Debrecen/Budapest, 1990.
Hidvégi Mária, Connecting to the world market. Hungary's leading electrical engineering companies 1867-1949. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, 2016.
Mária Hidvégi, Network, Hierarchy, International Market Integration: the Participation of Tungsram in International Cartels, in György Kövér, Ágnes Pogány and Boglárka Weisz (eds.), Network and Hierarchy. Hungarian Economic History Yearbook 2020, Hajnal István Foundation/ Centre for Humanities Research, Budapest, 2020, 389-410. http://real.mtak.hu/118302/1/Gazd_t%C3%B6rt_2020_K%C3%96NYV_2020_10_15_online.pdf
Ákos Koroknai (ed.), History of Tungsram Ltd. 1896-1996. Aschner Lipót Foundation, Budapest, 2004. https://mek.oszk.hu/08700/08736/08736.pdf
György Kövér, Fifty Giants. Industrial company top lists in Hungary in the first half of the 20th century. Our past 12 (2000) 3, 86-122.
Tibor Prokob - Gábor Berkovics:Radar developments in Hungary during the Second World War under the direction of the Institute of Military Technology, https://haditechnikaiintezet.hu/prokob-tibor-berkovics-gabor-radarfejlesztesek-magyarorszagon-masodik-vilaghaboru-alatt
Endre Vajda (editor-in-chief), A Hungarian century of news technology. Híradástechnikai Tudományos Egyesület/MTESZ, Budapest, [1981].