Electrical Automation Design Institute

Originally established to design individual and serial production of control systems, the scope of tasks expanded to include production, assembly, commissioning and servicing. In addition, they also carried out many domestic and foreign installations as general contractors (e.g. TVK, Dunai Vasmű, Illmenau Porcelain Factory, Leuna Werke)

The institute, despite its name, operated in a corporate form, and its activities can be divided into 8 areas:

Machine tool control, which also extended to industrial automation. Its headquarters were in Ó Street, led by Ottó Bánhegyi. Among their many developments, the most significant is the NC, then CNC machine tool control UNIMERIC family, of which nearly 40 are still in operation today, in Slovakia and Poland. 10 units were produced annually.

Punched tape preparation: This is a device called Prepamat, which was a punched tape writing and reading peripheral (the Hungarian Teletype), which later became a computer called Practicomp. Several hundred Prepamats were produced annually. There was also an on-line version as a console for the Practicomp computer. Later, the punched tape was replaced with an 8″ floppy disk made by MOM, from which point it was called Floppymat.

Computer: Vilati designed and manufactured the Practicomp 4000 computer from 1973, the first fully Hungarian-designed, mass-produced 3rd generation computer (built from integrated circuits). Its 32-bit structure and 96-bit floating-point arithmetic coprocessor suggested it for high-precision technical and scientific applications, but instead, the approximately 100 units produced were used for corporate administration, process control, and educational word processing tasks. Its largest user was the Hungarian People's Army.

Drives, which can be further divided into three areas:

Drive development department, which was located on Népfürdő Street. This is where Dr. Sándor Jeszenszky began his career as a design and development engineer – who later became the company’s technical director and then chief development engineer – initially Ward Leonard drives were developed, with amplidyne and then transistor regulators. In 1963, they already produced thyristor DC drives, which was a major breakthrough at the International Fair in 1965.

Drive design department, designing conventional asynchronous motor drives and controlled drives developed by the development department, adapting them to specific technologies. Control engineering department, where technological controls are designed, including for agricultural and food industry machines.

Another well-known VILATI product was the tomato processing machine. Later it was adapted to be used for any fruit, usually for exotic fruits, for making fruit juice. It was a serious export item, mainly to Arab countries. Its control panel was already designed, designed by László Karmazsin, recognized and awarded in design circles. Here, the VILATI-developed (EMG-made) modular system, EDS 4000 (statomat) digital control family was made, which served to replace relay controls, with plug-in encapsulated elements designed for industrial applications.

Process Control: Creating telemechanical systems for the oil and gas industry.

Traffic control: Operating traffic lights in Budapest and other large rural cities under a Fiskars license and then with self-developed equipment.

Logical system design: was led by Tivadar Tóth on Váci út. It had an independent profile, including the control and organization of high warehouses, but was also incorporated into passenger information (e.g. passenger information at Ferihegy Airport) and other departments.

Other: Radiation meter, IC tester, electric newspaper, but this also includes an automatic bowling alley manufactured under license from the Swiss company Schmid, many of which were also shipped to Western Europe. The significance of this was that at that time a company could import as many building elements as it exported. Capitalist export made it possible to import quality building elements and apply the most advanced technologies. In the 80s, a large number of Expressz railway ticket vending machines (cash terminals) were sold in the Soviet Union.

The company was founded in 1967 under the name VILATI Control Equipment Factory in Eger (Faiskola Street 8). Its name was first changed to Villamos Automatika Main Contractor and Manufacturer Company in 1978, and then to VILATI Automatika Company in 1985. In the spring of 1992, the Metropolitan Court, as the court of registration, initiated bankruptcy proceedings against the company, which had previously been placed under state administrative supervision. The Board of Directors of the State Property Agency decided on the transformation of VILATI Automatika Company into a joint-stock company by its resolution of November 24, 1993. VILATI Automatika Rt., which was founded as a 100% state-owned company on November 30, 1993, acquired its majority share in 1998, and in 1992, Vilati Automatika Company and Micronetics Europe Rt. MVA Micronetics-Vilati Automatizálási Részvénytársaság (MVA Rt.), founded by WALLIS Rt., but acquired by WALLIS Rt. in the same year. After acquiring the majority of shares, MVA Micronetics-Vilati Automatizálási Rt. merged Vilati Automatika Rt. into its organization and took the name Vilati Automatizálási és Telekommunikaciós Részvénytársaság – (abbreviated: Vilati Rt.). The company, which is 100% owned by Wallis Rt., operated as a holding company consisting of four divisions and several subsidiaries, continuing its traditional and new activities that had been started in the meantime. One of its subsidiaries was Kreutler Vilati Systems Kft. (KVS), founded with the German company Kreutler from Karlsruhe, which, among other things, won the construction of the national police deployment system. VILATI Automatizálási és Telekommunikaciós Zrt., which has been operating as a private limited company since 2006. – (VILATI Zrt.) – In 2009, it was acquired by NAVIGATOR INFORMATIKA Business Service and Trading Zrt. – (NAVIGATOR INFORMATIKA Zrt.).

In the 1950s, the automation of machine tools reached such a level that the electrical control equipment itself and the technological unit were separated. This meant an independent production profile, so a separate unit was created within the Ganz Electricity Factory, the Electrical Control Equipment Factory. As a result of the profile cleansing of the 1950s (essentially: it was forbidden to manufacture anything that did not fit a company's profile), they were transferred to TRANSZVILL (the nationalized German AEG). They also attached the design group that was already involved in the design of these devices, called TRANSZVILL Design Office. (They had an independent location in Buda on Ganz Street). They carried out the design, while TRANSZVILL carried out the production at Csata Street 8. On July 1, 1958, due to management disputes, the Design Office separated from the parent company and joined the Electric Power Plant Installation Company (VÁV), under the name VÁVATI (Electric Power Plant Installation Company Design Office),

Based on the idea of Tibor Szentiványi, a flexible disk memory storage (the ancestor of today's floppy), which Ottó Bánhegyi and his colleagues began to develop at the Telephone Factory. When the development there was suspended, they continued the work at VILATI under the leadership of Ottó Bánhegyi. They continued working on the flexible disk memory, they were not too far from a production-ready solution when the 8″ paper-bag floppy disks appeared, which spread very quickly throughout the world and displaced all other rotating disk memories from the market.

1977: 2500 people, of which 1000-1200 were employed at the Eger factory

The directorate was located on the 5th floor of the KGMTI (Design Offices of the Ministry of Metallurgy and Mechanical Industry) building at 55 Krisztina Street, Bp. 1012 (Matáv headquarters since 1990).

It was like this at the time:

They had many locations in Budapest, including in Ó Street in the VIth district, Népfürdő Street and Váci Street in the XIIIth district, Bíró Street in the IInd district and many more. In 1967, they started production in Eger at Faiskola Street 8, under the name Vilati Control Equipment Factory, under the leadership of technical director Dr. Oszkár Renn. In Budapest, they also started building their own headquarters on the side of the Castle, on Logodi Street, but this only reached the foundation until the change of regime.

For the 1989 BNV publication, see Computer world Computer Science 1989 issue 24-1.