Edison Bell in Hungary : Eternola Mechanikai Rt.

Szabó, Ferenc János (2024) Edison Bell in Hungary : Eternola Mechanikai Rt. In: Contributions to the History of the Record Industry = Beiträge zur Geschichte der Schallplattenindustrie. Gesellschaft für Historische Tonträger, Wien, pp. 84-93. ISBN 9783950290684

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Abstract

Despite the fact that there was a prosperous gramophone industry in Hungary before 1918 (including an independent Hungarian recording firm, Első Magyar Hanglemezgyár), after the First Word War, the Hungarian gramophone industry virtually disappeared. Some international recording companies - mostly Favorite and Columbia - made recordings in Hungary during the last years of the Great War; however, the country's f inancial and territorial losses, as well as internal political tensions, made it very difficult to relaunch the cultural life after 1918. After a few years of stagnation, the gramophone trade began to revive in 1923.2 However, new Hungarian recordings were made mostly abroad. The international companies only began to make recordings in Hungary again in 1926 (HMV, Columbia, Homocord) and 1927 (Odeon). T his was the situation in which Eternola Mechanikai Rt. was founded, by a merge of the gramophone factory of György Gábor and the precision mechanical factory of Gyula [Julius] Liedl.3 Since the 1980s, Eternola has been attracting the attention of researchers of Hungarian recording history,4 although some misinformation has also been published about them.5 In my article I will present the history of the record company based on contemporary sources.

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