or presenting the main results of Hungarian science and techniques through objects, one would need quite a large space. Such a presentation will be realised by the experts furnishing the Hungarian pavilion of the Hannover world-exposition in 2000, but in Frankfurt only a small bit of this will be available. A very beautiful Eötvös pendulum will be to see among the relics, which is one of the most famous Hungarian technical inventions and became widespread all around the world in the past 100 years. By using the pendulum, the smallest changes can be measured inside the Earth and it also gives a great help in searching petrol and gas. It is understandable why so many people in so many countries were interested, since the beginning of this century, by this imposing instrument.

The first electric-engine of the world will be presented at the exhibition, made by a Hungarian engineer-physician Ányos Jedlik, who became member of the Hungarian Academy simultaneously with Faraday, the other famous expert of electricity. The works of Jedlik were even recognised by Siemens, who worked on similar fields. The Jedlik-relic was already presented in 1927 at the celebration of the 100^th anniversary of Volta’s death expert of electronics, who received it with great satisfaction. At that time, Jedlik's engine was already 100 years old.

Another speciality will be a moon-ball, presented for the visitors at the exhibition in Frankfurt, where those moon-craters are shown, that were named in the past decades after Hungarian scientists. Craters are named after Loránd Eötvös, János Bolyai and Miksa Hell the world famous astronomer of the XVIII century. However, craters are also named after Gyula Fényi, the researcher of sun eruptions, József Petzval, the outstanding expert of lenses and János András Segner, the Hungarian professor well known at German universities. Among the outstanding figures of our century, the Hungarian Tódor Kármán, the world-wide famous flying technician and honorary doctor at many German universities has also got a crater, as well as one of the most famous mathematicians and computer scientist, János Neumann. Of course, Leo Szilárd, the famous expert of atoms, chain reactions and biophysics "is also on the moon". They are all to be presented - with the help of moon-craters.

Three codices will be presented to our visitors, showing those books that had links with Hungary and appeared in various presses in Frankfurt. We have looked up the years between 1500 and 1800, and found surprisingly many valuable works. It seems that around one hundred important books have appeared during this period, with the contribution of printers in Frankfurt, concerning Hungarian history, culture and book publishing. This material - most of it being decorated with prints - proves, that many Frankfurter printers were willing to print volumes connected to Hungary, in German and Latin. However, some of them looked at Hungarian history on several hundred pages and in particular, at the history of the Hungarian Kingdom. It is worth not forgetting that Hungarians had settled down in 896 in the Carpathian-Basin and their reigning princes and later kings were leading the society for 630 years. Between 1526 and 1718, a significant part of the country was under Turkish occupation and the history of this period is properly discussed in the historical works appeared in Frankfurt. In the 18^th century the country belonged to the Habsburg Empire, in the present century to the German and then to the Russian sphere of influence and since 1989 it is a sovereign republic again. We will evoke the most important moment of the early centuries' history, with the help of the Hungary related volumes - printed in Frankfurt - and their illustrated material.

In 1711, the work of Dávid Czwittinger appeared in Frankfurt presenting the Hungary related works that appeared till his time and justifying the amount of valuable pieces of work that Hungarian science gave to the world in the first centuries of printing. In Hungary, the first book was printed in 1473 and it was the sixth country in the world, where printing became implanted (books are printed since 1440 in Germany, since 1465 in Italy and since 1470 in Switzerland, France and the Netherlands). Newspaper letters were already printed from 1587 in Hungary, thus the country was among the first ones accepting printing. And the huge handbook printed in 1711 in Frankfurt supports all this.

Essentially, there is no scientific field or technical branch, where Hungarian scientists and engineers have not done anything lasting. For a long time, Hungarian mathematicians are among the best in the world and our experts have also significantly contributed to the atomic science. The Hungarian capital's technical university gave several famous scientists to the world and Hungary's mining culture dates back to several centuries. In Central-Europe, the first certificate for mining engineers was issued in Hungary and for the first time civil technical certificate was available in this country. Indeed the world's first technical scientific congress took place in Hungary, and even Goethe was member of the international scientific society, set up at this occasion. (By the way one of the world's biggest Goethe collection is to be found in Hungary, in Budapest.)

Ignác Semmelweis became world-famous as a medical scientist, as well as the mathematicians János Bolyai, Loránd Eötvös, Ányos Jedlik, Zoltán Bay and many others or even the outstanding Hungarian space scientists of our days. János Neumann and János György Kemény became well known through their works in computer science. The computers of our days are still called Neumann-type, and the BASIC language - created with the contribution of Kemény - forms an important part of computer science.

Several Nobel price winners were Hungarians, for instance the researcher of vitamin C, Albert Szent-Györgyi and György Hevesy, who has developed the use of isotopes as indicators, being still the most widespread procedure in medicine. Jenő Wigner who worked outstandingly in the physics of the atomic nucleus, György Békésy who did researches concerning the structure of the ear and other acoustic problems and Dénes Gábor - an engineer in Budapest - who invented holography, were all Nobel price winners. János Harsányi mathematician-economist and György Oláh chemist are our contemporaries and have also received this honour. And there are still many of them to come.

At the exposition there is no time for all of them, but some of their portraits, main works and inventions will be present. This will illustrate that the Hungarian science, techniques, the Hungarian scientists are present for centuries in the very best of the culture of Europe and the world. However, several architects, photographers, film experts or others from different branches of the art could be mentioned. In this century, Hungarians have scattered all around the world. Many of them have settled down in America, others in Australia, Africa, and Asia or in all parts of Europe. However, they all feel to belong to those settled down in 895 in Central-Europe. The language - spoken by only this single ethnic group - is the base of our identity. As justified in written relics, the language has not almost changed in the past 1000 years, the texts of the early Hungarians are still easy to read, even today. The same stands for printed works, which have not changed much during the past centuries. In Europe, Hungarian printing has a special place - for instance Miklós Tótfalusi Kis's jansoon lettering. However, keeping up the mentality and standard of the codices of king Mátyás in the 15^th century, Hungarian typography and printing was developing towards the publishing and printing of nowadays. The biggest and most detailed encyclopaedia of world literature was issued in Hungary and it is always taken into consideration to publish the important foreign works also in Hungarian. The whole German Conversations Lexicon has already been translated into Hungarian 150 years ago, as well as the Larousse dictionary and the Cambridge Encyclopaedia, in the past few years. The Encyclopaedia Britannica will appear these days with additions in Hungarian. Hungarian publishing has done great things. A good example is the outstanding series of 150 books, appearing for the 1000^th anniversary of the Hungarian State.

We would like to present Hungary in Frankfurt, by showing some momentum of her interesting story for the visitors and by encouraging them to read books appearing in foreign language about Hungary. All this will contribute from the part of those being unacquainted with the Hungarian language, to a better understanding of the country's past, culture, science and of the thoughts of the Hungarians living outside the present borders of Hungary. These thoughts are made more complete by the literary works, musical notes, photo-albums, traveller's guides published these years. Some of these will be visible at the Hall of Hungary in Frankfurt.

Programme Director: Prof. István GAZDA, Director of the Institute of Hungarian History of Science