1735 – 1742 The man who described a whole kingdomMuž, ktorý opísal celé kráľovstvo

Bel set out to do something nobody had done: to describe the Kingdom of Hungary county by county — the land, the rivers, the towns, the crops, the people, the languages, everything. The result was the Notitia Hungariae novae historico-geographica, four volumes printed between 1735 and 1742, which got through ten counties before he ran out of life. It made him famous: he was elected to the Royal Society in London and to the Berlin Academy, and to learned societies in St Petersburg, Jena and Olomouc. He described himself in a line worth learning — „lingua Slavus, natione Hungarus, eruditione Germanus”: Slav by language, Hungarian by country, German by education. He died in Bratislava on 29 August 1749.Bel si predsavzal niečo, čo dovtedy nikto neurobil: opísať Uhorsko stolicu po stolici — krajinu, rieky, mestá, plodiny, ľudí, jazyky, všetko. Výsledkom je Notitia Hungariae novae historico-geographica, štyri zväzky vytlačené v rokoch 1735 až 1742, v ktorých stihol prebrať desať stolíc, kým mu došiel život. Preslávilo ho to: zvolili ho za člena Kráľovskej spoločnosti v Londýne aj Berlínskej akadémie a učených spoločností v Petrohrade, Jene a Olomouci. Sám o sebe napísal vetu, ktorú sa oplatí vedieť — „lingua Slavus, natione Hungarus, eruditione Germanus”: jazykom Slovan, krajinou Uhor, vzdelaním Nemec. Zomrel v Bratislave 29. augusta 1749.