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Hungary Honours Late Apple Founder with Bronze Statue

In remembrance of the late Steve Jobs, the founder and chairman of Hungarian software maker Graphisoft SE, Gabor Bojar, has commissioned a bronze statue of … Continue reading Hungary Honours Late Apple Founder with Bronze Statue


Late Founder of Apple, Steve Jobs
Late Founder of Apple, Steve Jobs

In remembrance of the late Steve Jobs, the founder and chairman of Hungarian software maker Graphisoft SE, Gabor Bojar, has commissioned a bronze statue of the Apple co-founder.

The statue, crafted by Hungarian sculptor Erno Toth, shows Jobs as he is gesturing while he lectures or talks.

The bronze statue is 220 centimeters tall, weighs 180 kilos and will be unveiled on December 21. Sculptor Toth has worked on the statue for the last few months.

Bojar commissioned the statue as he feels he owes a lot to Jobs and wanted to commemorate his legacy to the world.

“We believe, Graphisoft and I believe myself as his students, so we learnt a lot from him. We learnt from him what does it mean: information technology with human face. I met him personally almost 30 years ago and it very much inspired us. And somehow we wanted to express our appreciation for his contribution to the development of Graphisoft and to the successes of Graphisoft, and I believe to the successes of the world because information technology changes the entire world and he changed the information technology giving it a human face,” Bojar said.

Toth said he was honoured and challenged by the commission. He watched a film about Jobs and observed his character and movements as he created the concept for the statue.

“The concept was that we should only have a dynamic statue and not a static one. I watched footage of his lectures, he was an excellent lecturer shown in the reactions of his audience. He moved dynamically all the time, gestures were very important for him, and he always maintained contact with his audience,” Toth said.

The statue will be erected in the Graphisoft Park that hosts several IT companies, including Graphisoft. Graphisoft is known globally for its architectural design software ArchiCAD.

Apple has supported the Hungarian company since 1984, when Jobs met them at the annual CEBIT expo in Hanover, Germany. Bojar said that to a large extent, Graphisoft ArchiCAD owes its global success to Jobs. Apple gave Graphisoft cash and computers at a time when Graphisoft was a young company with very limited resources and it provided access to global markets.

Apart from the company’s personal attachment to Jobs, Bojar also believes that Hungary has a special flair for honouring IT achievements given its rich science culture and achievements.

Many Noble prize winners, among them Janos Neumann who is regarded as the father of the modern computer, were born and educated in Hungary. Graphisoft co-founded an award dedicated to the math teacher, Laszlo Ratz, as of several of famous Hungarian scientists such as Neumann.

The award is given to outstanding math teachers each year.

Bojar believes Jobs’ achievement for information technology is truly revolutionary.

“The new information technology, we can call it digital information technology made this huge amount of information accessible, which is a new revolution in the human history. Within that revolution as within the revolution of the writing there was an important point, the Gutenberg at the printing, which made writing accessible to the masses similarly to the personal computers made the IT accessible for the masses. So the personal computer itself is the one which is the invention of Steve Jobs, this is the one which can be compared to Gutenberg.”