Gábor Kornél Tolnai (November 22,áborKorné 1902, in Budapest – February 3, 1982, in Stockholm) was a Hungarian-Swedish engineer and inventor. He is best known for his inventions and patents for spinning machines, devices for the Swedish National Defense and several types of tape recorders.
Biography
Kornél Tolnai was born in 1902 in Budapest in Hungary and took his Diploma Engineer's degree at the Technical University of Budapest in 1924.
During the years 1928–1931 Kornél Tolnai made three inventions of his own, Centralograph, Teletachograph and Regulator, which he accomplished completely. After that he came into contact with the Swedish LM Ericsson. They bought his patents and then he was working at LM Ericsson, both in Stockholm and in Budapest for some years. He set up an experimental workshop in Stockholm and worked with designs and inventions, some of which led to patents. He was active in Sweden from 1935 and became a Swedish citizen in 1940.
Marriage and family
Gábor Kornél Tolnai was the son of Gábor Tolnai and his wife Ilona Tolnai. His father was active in the Magyar Államvasutak, the Hungarian State Railways, popularly MÁV.
In 1932, he met his Swedish wife at a party in the "Winter garden" (Vinterträdgården) at Grand Hôtel Royal in Stockholm, when the Swedish-Hungarian society had a jubilee. The Swedish artist David Wallin had just sold a painting, Mother and Child, to the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest (), and David Wallin was invited to Grand Hotel Royal (Grand Hôtel Royal with the Winter garden) and he took his 22-year-old daughter Bianca with him. She was an educated artist. Kornél and Bianca engaged on January 24, 1935. In 1935, on September 17, Kornél Tolnai married the Swedish artist Bianca Wallin (1909–2006). She was the daughter of the famous artist David Wallin (1876–1957) and his wife Elin Wallin (1884–1969). In 1935 the couple settled down in Stockholm and in 1942 he moved with his family to a large villa in Bromma, outside Stockholm, where he lived with his family until he died in 1982 at nearly eighty years of age. He had three daughters, Eva, born in 1939, Monika, born in 1942 and Hillevi, born in 1944.
Studies in Budapest
Gábor Kornél Tolnai entered the German-speaking Lutheran Fasori Gimnázium in Budapest for eight years in 1912 through 1920. Budapest–Fasori Evangélikus Gimnázium, 1071 Budapest, Városligeti fasor 17–21, was one of the best schools in Budapest, and he got his higher school certificate in the spring of 1920. He was a classmate of Eugene Wigner, eminent physicist, mathematician and Nobel Prize winner in Physics in 1963 and schoolmate of John von Neumann, eminent mathematician, physicist, polymath and inventor of the computor. Fasori Evangélikus Gimnázium had a strong academic tradition and outstanding teachers, i.e. mathematics teacher László Rátz, physics teacher Mikola Sándor and class teacher Imre Oppel. Fasori Gimnázium is a famous secondary school in Budapest. It is located near the City Park.
After graduating Gábor Kornél Tolnai studied at the Technical University of Budapest. He was ready in record time with his Diploma Engineer degree only 21 years old in the spring of 1924. After his diploma in Budapest in spring 1924 Gábor Kornél Tolnai settled down in Paris for study and practice for three years.
Inventions, patents, employment and self-employed
The Group Linum-Taussig
In the autumn of 1927 Tolnai returned to Budapest and became an employee of the Group Linum-Taussig in Budapest as a technical superior and supervisor of the company's industrial spinning machines for spinning textiles manufacturing in the process (Manufacturing process management, MPM) of creating yarn from various raw fibre materials. Spinning is an ancient textile art in which plant, animal or synthetic fibers, are twisted together to form yarn. Linum-Taussig was established in 1922.
The head office of the company Linum-Taussig Sámuel és Fiai Lenfonó és Szövőipar Részvénytársaság was in Budapest, and they also had a branch office in Győr. Linum-Taussig Sámuel és Fiai Lenfonó és Szövőipari Rt. was founded in 1922. For the company Linum-Taussig Kornél Tolnai also worked as a supervisor in the city of Győr (German: Raab) at their spinning machine factory there. Győr is the most important industrial city of northwest Hungary and is situated about 30 km from Budapest between Budapest and Vienna, with waggons and machinery factories. The factory system began widespread use somewhat later when cotton spinning of textiles was mechanized.