It was both the first and the longest surviving telephone newspaper system,[3] although from 1 December 1925 until its termination in 1944 it was primarily used to retransmit programmes broadcast by Magyar Rádió.

[4] Three decades before the development of radio broadcasting, the Telefon Hírmondó was the first service to electronically deliver a wide range of spoken and musical programming to a diverse audience.

The Telefon Hírmondó was founded by Tivadar Puskás (a few reviews translated his name as "Theodore Buschgasch"),[5] an engineer and inventor who had worked with Thomas Edison.

[6][7] In view of the ever-increasing pace of living, especially in major cities, Puskás recognized that daily newspapers, even with multiple editions, could no longer effectively keep up with developing events.

[9] The system began operating on 15 February 1893 with around 60 subscribers, and was inaugurated with a message from Puskás, which, translated into English, stated: We greet the inhabitants of Budapest.

[9][10] For the initial transmissions, individuals who had telephones called into a central office to listen to Telefon Hírmondó reports that were updated hourly.

The contemporary press laws did not apply to a telephone newspaper, and government officials were wary that the Telefon Hírmondó could develop into an "important tool of power", as it could potentially be used to quickly spread strategic, political, and social information.

After two weeks of successful operation, on 2 March 1893 Puskás sent a letter to Béla Lukács, the Hungarian Minister of Trade, requesting formal authorization to run his "newspaper", under the provisions of the Act No.

While these negotiations were ongoing, Albert Puskás sold the Telefon Hírmondó, along with the associated patent rights, to a local engineer, István Popper.

It later received permission to string its own lines, and, under the guidance of its technical director, Nándor Szmazsenka, constructed a network[11] that divided Budapest into twenty-seven districts.

[13] Twenty-seven copper wires ran from microphone receivers in the Opera House to the central office, where the current would pass through a patented device that increased the sound.

A loud buzzer, strong enough to be heard throughout a room even when the subscriber's receivers were not currently being listened to, was used to draw attention to important announcements.

The American author Thomas Denison, who visited Budapest in 1901, found that transmission of spoken news was "highly satisfactory", but the audio quality for musical programmes, whether vocal or instrumental, "still leaves something to be desired".

[14] Thomas S. Denison wrote in 1901 that the service began transmitting at 10:30 AM, and generally ended at about 10:30 PM, although it ran later in the case of a concert or some other night event.

W. G. Fitz-Gerald stated the following schedule for a day's typical programme in 1907:[13] In addition, special lectures or concerts for children were given once a week, and information for all the principal Hungarian and Austrian horse races was reported as soon as the results were known.

It is the delight of women and children, and is a real entertainment to the sick in their homes, to patients in hospitals, the blind, and all those who have neither time nor money to go to theater, concert, or opera.

[13] Thomas S. Denison wrote in the April 1901 issue of The World's Work: The paper is so well known and has accomplished so much that it appears to be beyond the stage of experiment so far as Budapest is concerned.

The Telefon Hírmondó's technology was patented in a number of countries, and in 1910 the rights to its use was licensed for the establishment of the Araldo Telefonico (Italian for "Telephone Herald") in Rome, Italy.

[18] Manley M. Gillam, a former advertising manager of the New York Herald, encountered the Telefon Hírmondó while touring Hungary, and obtained the American rights.

A 1929 Chicago Daily News article that reviewed the history of the Telefon Hírmondó stated that the service's introduction qualified as "the first broadcasting".

[19] In 1967, reviewing the history of organized distributed audio in general, David L. Woods concluded that "The Telephonic Newspaper of Budapest marked the first regular 'broadcasting' operation.

[22] Carolyn Marvin states that Telefon Hírmondó can be seen as a "proto-broadcasting system",[23] and An Nguyen notes that it might also fit into the definition of online news as the content was delivered over a point-to-point communication network only to selected users.

[6] Using news, literary and musical pieces that were transmitted through Telefon Hirmondó in 1897, Első Pesti Egyetemi Rádió, a Budapest based university station, for the first time, reconstructed a full "broadcast day".