Around 1861, Benedictine teacher-physicist Ányos Jedlik built a rotating electrical machine based on the self-exciting dynamo principle, anticipating inventors who would later become famous in the West. However, he did not publish his results in an international forum in time, so priority was never formally recognized.
Engineer Tivadar Puskás demonstrated the principle of the telephone exchange in 1876–77, allowing many subscribers to connect through a shared network. The invention enabled the mass spread of telephone networks.
Born in Pécs, Vilmos Fuchs founded the Fox Film Corporation in 1915 — predecessor of today's 20th Century Fox — and shaped early Hollywood as an American film mogul. He wasn't an inventor, but as an industry founder he introduced defining technological and business innovations to filmmaking.
Engineer Kálmán Kandó worked out the phase-converter traction system by 1923, enabling high-voltage alternating-current railway traction. It was first used successfully on the Budapest–Hegyeshalom line.
In Szeged in 1932, Albert Szent-Györgyi isolated and identified hexuronic acid from paprika, later shown to be identical to vitamin C. He received the 1937 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery.
Journalist László József Bíró patented the fast-drying, thick-ink ballpoint pen in 1938. He and his brother György Bíró further developed it after emigrating to Argentina, where it went into mass production.
Chemist György Hevesy developed the use of radioactive isotopes as tracers, making it possible to follow metabolic processes inside a living organism. He received the 1943 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this work.
In his 1945 report, mathematician John von Neumann described the computer architecture still foundational today, in which instructions and data are stored in the same memory. This principle underlies nearly every computer in use now.