Marcell Jánosi

Marcell Jánosi was born on December 5, 1931, in Budapest, and from a young age, he showed a keen interest in construction work. He attended Kemény Zsigmond High School, but in the late 1940s, he also mastered several trades, including welding and milling. In 1954, he graduated from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, but he continued to work throughout his university studies.

After obtaining his degree, he first worked as a group leader engineer at the Telecommunications Directorate of the Ministry of Metallurgy and Machine Industry. Then, from 1957, he became the chief technologist at the Budapest Radio Technology Factory (BRG). There, he participated in the design of numerous devices, and from 1960 onwards, he led his own design team, focusing on tape recorder technology as chief designer. His first project was the Calypso reel-to-reel tape recorder, which was popular not only in Hungary but also internationally, with around one hundred thousand units produced. Following this, he designed numerous hobby and professional tape recorders with his team.

In 1970, he shifted his focus to computer data storage, and his team began designing a family of cassette data recorders named SLK-4. Around this time, the first floppy disk, developed by IBM for the System/370 mainframe, hit the market. This was an 8-inch diameter flexible disk housed in a plastic sleeve, and Jánosi continued to develop this concept.

Besides the cassette floppy disk, Marcell Jánosi also designed several other computer devices, including cassette data storage devices and plotters. For his work in developing tape recorder technology in Hungary, he was awarded the second degree of the State Prize of the People’s Republic of Hungary in 1975.