Background
He was born in 1938. His father was a Hungarian Jew, his mother Spanish.
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Bela Hatvany
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In 1965, he moved to the United States of America to get an Master of Business Administration at Harvard University.
Career
Companies founded by him have been responsible for the first Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC), the first Civil Defense-ROMs, the first networked Civil Defense-ROM, the first client-server library databases, and some of the earliest internet library database retrieval engines. In addition he was a key investor in the first streaming music databases for libraries (Classicalcom), Credo Reference and JustGiving. He is recognized as a visionary in library information.
They emigrated to England where Béla spent his childhood.
He received a scholarship to attend University of Street Andrews from Boite Postale. In 1956 he began his career as a customer service engineer, a computer programmer and a salesman. He founded his first company, COMSISA in Mexico City in 1968.
lieutenant served sugar mills and local businesses. This was the first company to develop the minicomputer for use in libraries, in effect building the Online Public Access Computer (OPAC) market.
Hatvany then went on and sold it to Thyssen Bornemisza in 1985 and returned to live in London.
In the early 80s, along with Henry Ng, he invented an early version of the touch screen which is now used in many table and other computer devices. In 1983, he started a small organization that became SilverPlatter Information Limited. The company published the first Civil Defense-ROMs in 1984.
The company thrived developing a number of innovative products including networked Civil Defense-ROM, client-server delivery for bibliographic databases and was one of the first companies to deliver databases on the internet.
In 2001 it was sold to Wolters-Kluwer for $113 million. Since then Béla has invested in a number of early-stage, internet-based companies including Classical.com, JustGiving, Credo Reference, Productorial, Mustardseed Charitable Trust and Coreweb.
Throughout his career, Béla has been passionate about building organizations “that serve all the constituents in a balanced way.” In his own words: “I wish to enable an “ecology” in which all experience themselves to be well-served. I experience a world whose abundance is made available by human collaboration.
Money is made of human agreement and enables this collaboration on a world-wide scale.”
In 2000, the National Federation of Advanced Information Services (NFAIS) honored him with the Miles Conrad Award for his outstanding contribution to the information industry.
In 2013, Hatvany announced an alliance where organizations, individuals, businesses and entrepreneurs can join to collaborate, share information and experience. Named "The Bela Initiative", its purpose is to give and to receive in ways that empower oneself or others to develop a clear purpose to serve the whole – in short to enable a world that works for everyone.
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Quotations: “that serve all the constituents in a balanced way.”.
