Translator: Reka Lorinczy
Many of us are collectors of objects.
We typically have many more things than we need, can use, or enjoy.
If someone does that manically, it can even become exaggerated.
I know collectors whose apartments are hardly accessible,
or their backyards are full, as they collect locomotives.
(Laughter)
Hopefully my case is not so serious.
I only collect the "dinosaurs" of information technology,
especially the smaller ones.
The larger ones live in Szeged.
People around me could better tell you how serious my condition is.
Just to give you a sense of the situation,
when I arrive home with a long sought after object,
my - otherwise extremely supportive - family doesn’t ask,
“What is this?”, but rather, “What for, this time?”
(Laughter)
Why should someone collect outdated objects
which cannot be used for anything but catching dust?
And which, because of their rarity, are often expensive too?
To this question, I have four answers.
The first one: These objects are beautiful.
Here you can see a section of my office.
(Laughter)
These are all crucial artifacts of information technology.
The order here is determined by the order and the logic of evolution.
I clean these objects and arrange them with special care.
The next slide shows my entire office,
(Laughter)
which also functions as a storage room for these objects.
I believe that these objects become beautiful again as I display them.
Old objects are like old people.
When they are combed and dressed up, something about them sparkles.
They can be attractive, even to someone younger.
If they are attractive, it may be worth going closer to them.
For example if we close-up to these compasses,
we discover that they are beautiful with all their different shapes,
and the incredible knowledge that is built into them.
These were not the playthings of children,
but rather the magical tools of old masters.
This is what they used to design cathedrals, the pyramids,
and later on, technological devices such as computers.
Here we have a very interesting object from my collection,
an astrolabe.
We can use these different metal plates
to do a thousand different astronomical calculations
or to “predict future events.”
Or look at these mechanical clocks.
Depending on their level of precision,
they could be used to determine where we were on the Earth.
Moving on, this is a mechanical calculator,
which, just a few decades ago, was still in use
as an in-flight computer on an airplane to calculate distances.
When I pick up and sort these objects,
I often feel as if I was shaking hands with the old masters who created them.
This is a great, rewarding feeling,
and I think the second answer for collecting is
that when I actually sort these objects,
by preserving their beauty and sharing it with others,
I am paying a tribute to their legacy.
I have brought two objects here to illustrate.
First is this small compass that I have in my pocket.
This was the personal property of an important person, Nándor Süss.
Süss was the father of precision mechanics in Hungary.
He was the person who made the torsional pendulum for Loránd Eötvös.
If we look at the next object, we see another beautiful compass
whose owners were again important people – Calderoni and Partner –
with the “partner” being none other than Ferenc Hopp,
the founder of the Budapest East-Asian Museum.
The third reason why collecting objects is important is they embody knowledge.
We all know the saying: “A picture is worth a thousand words.”
And just think how many pictures an object is worth.
We can see the object and how it works.
Or we follow them and we go close to them.
For example, to the magnetic core memories on the next picture,
we can even get a close-up of the storage bits.
On a modern device, this whole unit is so small,
that one could hardly see it.
But with older devices, if we look at them with an expert’s eye,
we can actually see how they worked.
The third answer why these are worth being collected is
that we know that the roots of creativity lie in familiar patterns,
on the patterns that are available in our mind.
If we can learn about these patterns from these objects,
then perhaps we can use them to shape our future and our fate.
This is also true for the microprocessors
and for all the electrical devices
but here the situation gets even more difficult
since the parts are smaller and more complex.
There is a fourth reason, and perhaps the most important reason for collecting:
These objects serve as a physical link
to valuable life stories of famous people.
If we look close-up and see their beauty,
they have something to teach us, even today.
I have two such objects and related life stories to share with you.
The first relates to this wax cylinder dictaphone.
The way it works is that you have to talk into this end,
quite loudly, as of course, there is no electronics inside.
This causes a membrane to press a needle into the wax to record the speech.
The special significance of this machine is that after the Treaty of Versailles,
many Hungarian universities found themselves lying outside
the borders of the country.
The famous and visionary Minister of Culture, Kuno Klebelsberg decided
to bring these universities back,
or rather, to rebuild them here in Hungary.
This led to the establishment of universities in Debrecen and Szeged.
Obviously walls are not enough for the universities
to function properly; they need talented people, too.
Someone mentioned to him
a PhD student in Cambridge, by the name of Albert Szentgyörgyi.
The Minister wrote a letter to him asking him to come home
and offered him the position of the head of the chemistry department
at the School of Medicine in Szeged.
Szentgyörgyi replied that he appreciated the offer but had to decline it,
as he had good prospects in Cambridge and had also received a scholarship
at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota,
which, as we all know,
remains one of the top institutions in this field.
So he could not return home.
Thankfully, Klebelsberg was a persistent person and wrote again.
This time, he also sent a messenger
with the message that he understood that Szentgyörgyi would need
appropriate instruments for his work, and asked him to make a list
of what he needed, that Klebelsberg would make sure to get for him.
Szentgyörgyi did indeed send a list, with this machine being one item on it,
and Kebelsberg purchased it.
We all know the end of the story.
Szentgyörgyi returned to Hungary and received the Nobel Prize for Medicine.
What this story teaches me is that of course, talent is essential.
But a good investor, a sponsor is needed
to make fundamental changes in the world.
It is easy to imagine that without this sponsorship,
Szentgyörgyi would not have returned to Hungary;
He would not have discovered
how much vitamin C there was in the peppers in Szeged,
and in all probability, his rivals would have received the Nobel Prize.
There’s another story I’d like to share with you.
This one’s related to a calculator. More precisely, to two calculators.
The first calculator was built in Vienna in the early 1900s.
It was built so well by an Austrian engineer
called Samuel Hertzstark, that after 100 years,
it is still functional today.
If we take a close look at the calculator we can see its beauty.
We can also discover the signs of wear, that show that it had been well used, too.
Despite being 100 years old, it still works well.
By turning this here it adds numbers, and by moving this register,
it can be used to do multiplication and division.
Well, Samuel Hertzstark had a son named Curt Hertzstark,
who grew up in the factory that made these calculators.
Like many of us,
Curt also wanted to achieve better things than his father had.
He wanted to make a much better calculator,
a smaller one, that would fit into his pocket.
So, he thought long and hard, and designed a calculator,
which was a big success and for which he received
an Austrian patent in 1938.
Unfortunately, history intervened in the form of the Anschluss.
The Germans occupied Austria
and a few years later, he was sent to Buchenwald to await his sad fate.
But luckily,
when a truckload of Olivetti calculators was delivered to the camp,
the Germans asked who could repair them.
Curt Hertzstark raised his hand.
And while repairing the calculators,
he mumbled that he knew how to make a much better one.
The guards heard him, and so did the camp commander,
who had an engineering background, who said:
"It is indeed so excellent, that it would be
a suitable victory present for the Fuhrer when we win the war.”
He gave Hertzstark an office, tools, and time.
Hertzstark kept working on the calculator’s design
until the war ended.
When he was freed, he had the drawings in his pocket.
He found an investor,
and started to manufacture magnificent calculators in Lichtenstein,
that were treasures in themselves.
Just listen to the sound of this miniature machine.
(Fine grumble)
It is as complex and delicate as a modern camera lens
or a high-quality watch.
The lesson I took away from this story
is that creativity is so powerful as to be able to save a man’s life.
It saved Curt Hertzstark’s.
In today’s world, we are facing serious problems;
poverty, ignorance, diseases, care of the elderly,
an increasingly changing and uncertain world.
Creativity is needed to outpace and solve these problems.
That is why it is important to collect these objects.
Once we’ve collected these objects,
the question is how to share them with others.
The answer is simple: You have to take them to the people.
They could be kept in a museum
that can be visited, virtually or physically,
but then people need to make an effort.
Instead, the objects need to be taken to them.
That is why, years ago,
I decided to build display cases and exhibit the objects
at the Informatics Faculty of the Óbuda University
and the Budapest Technical University.
Every two to three weeks I change the objects in the displays, like this.
I also display the stories behind the objects.
The most important criteria in choosing the location of the displays
was that they be in areas where students congregate,
preferably opposite a large lecture hall.
I replace the objects from time to time,
during the more than 30 different exhibitions.
So far, they have attracted a large audience of interested students.
Thank you for your attention.
(Applause)