#Exhibit of the Month

One of the great technical achievements that revolutionized the idea of time and space, opening a new era in the history of communication, is telegraphy. It is based on the transmission of electrical signals through a cable over long distances, allowing people to communicate instantly. The telegraph spread very quickly and a network of wires stretched around the world.

In 1837, the American painter and physicist Samuel Morse invented the first electromagnetic device for telegraphy, patented in 1840. To send messages by wire, Morse developed in 1838 a simple code of dots and dashes, which represented the letters of the alphabet, known as "Morse code ".

Both Morse code and the telegraph machine were improved over time, with the telegraph becoming the most widespread system of communication and information transmission for more than a century, until the advent of the Internet. The telegraph system consisted of a series of stations repeaters along the transmission line route. Each station had an operator who received and transmitted messages by telegraph. The Morse machine transmitted about 25 words per minute, which were recorded in code on a paper tape. The operator in charge of transmitting the message would decode it and write it on paper using a special typewriter.

In Bessarabia, the telegraph entered in 1860: on April 8, the Bender telegraph station began its activity, and on April 24, the one in Chisinau, following the construction of the first Odesa-Chisinau-Leova telegraph line. Currently, telegraph services have been discontinued. The only ones who still use coded communication are radio amateurs.

The Morse telegraph machine shown comes from the Osinoostrovsky electrotechnical plant, Soviet Union, and dates back to 1934. The exhibit was restored by Mihail Culașco.

Virtual Tour

Exhibitions

“Childhood in the Gulag”

“Iuliu Maniu” Memorial House in Bădăcin (Romania)

March 7 – May 10, 2024

On March 7, 2024, the Museum of Victims of Deportations and Political Repressions of the National History Museum of Moldova, in partnership with colleagues from the "Iuliu Maniu" Memorial House in Bădăcin (Sălaj county, Romania) and the County Museum of History and Art - Zalău (Romania), organized a new opening of the photo-documentary exhibition "Childhood in the Gulag" (curator Dr. Ludmila D. Cojocaru). The event took place within the commemorative actions devoted to the Day of Anti-Communist Political Detainees from the period 1944-1989, marked in Romania on March 9.

The exhibition "Childhood in the Gulag" presents photo-documentary images that reflect the life of Bessarabian children condemned to deportation, starvation, Russification, indoctrination and forced separation from their own families based on the repressive policies of the totalitarian-communist regime in the Moldavian SSR, in the period 1940-1941 and 1944-1953. The exhibition brings together about 180 photo-documentary images, accompanied by memories and archival documents from the collections of the National History Museum of Moldova, the Edineț County Museum, the Museum of History and Ethnography in Soroca, the Pro Memory Institute, from the archives of the memory communities, as well as the family archives of the victims of the totalitarian-communist regime in the Moldavian SSR.

The event was attended by Dr. Marin Pop, head of the Museography Section of the County Museum of History and Art - Zalău, Mr. Gheorghe Bancea, sub-prefect of Sălaj County, Mr. Paul Maghiu, administrator of Sălaj County, Dr. Ana-Maria Borz, museographer at the "Iuliu Maniu" Memorial House, and via video - the curator of the exhibition conf. Dr. Ludmila D. Cojocaru, from the Museum of Victims of Deportations and Political Repressions, branch of the National History Museum of Moldova. Among those present at the Opening were school teachers and students from the "Simion Bărnutiu" National College, the "Horia" Secondary School, and the "Silvania" Secondary School from Salaj county.

The exhibition can be visited at the "Iuliu Maniu" Memorial House in Bădăcin, Sălaj county (Romania) until May 10, 2024.

The photo-documentary exhibition "Childhood in the Gulag" was elaborated with the support of "The Development Cooperation and Democracy Promotion Programme" of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania.