#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

“Fashion and Lifestyle in the 20th Century. From the clothing collection of the National Museum of History of Moldova”

May 18, 2023 - January 31, 2024

Fashion is a mirror of the spirit of time, a useful tool for learning about the past of the country and how the changes (that society has undergone from a cultural, ideological, religious or political point of view) and modernization have affected clothing, lifestyle and values of society.

The civilian clothing collection of the National Museum of History of Moldova counts over 700 garments dating back to the 20th century, capable of stringing together the story of fashion and life, the social and the personal.

The most notable pieces from the collection - over 200 ones of historical, artistic and memorial value, worn by people who lived on this territory - are the subject of the exhibition: going out clothes, casual wear, outerwear and clothing accessories, which show various shapes, cuts, fabrics and materials. Some of the exhibited items belonged to such famous figures as the noblewoman Tatiana Perjul; Eugenia Crușevan, the first female lawyer in Bessarabia; opera singer Tamara Yatsentkovsky; artist Tatiana Nikolaidi; opera and folk singer Tamara Ciobanu; actress Ninel Kameneva; Antonina Luchinski, Doctor of Pedagogy.

All the exhibits together aim to reflect the metamorphoses of the age of change. The exhibition presents urban clothing, first of all influenced by transformations, and then "imported" and adapted also for the countryside.

The journey through the 20th century aims to show in general terms the evolution of clothing more or less in accordance with fashion trends, to reveal the lifestyle of the Bessarabians and how their tastes changed under Eastern, Western and Soviet influences. A significant part of the exhibition is focused on the clothing style dominated under the communist regime and known today as the "Soviet style".

The main decades of the last century are represented by one or two sets of clothing iconic for the given period, accompanied by various accessories and adornments, surrounded by various household items, appliances and pieces of furniture, in an attempt to recreate the atmosphere of that time, to reveal the influence of fashion on various aspects of social life.

Equally, the exhibition includes a number of photographs from the museum holdings, which capture the clothing history of Bessarabian society, as well as various social types and pictures of everyday life of the 20th century. These images represent the most authentic evidence of the past that deserves to be known.

The exhibition concludes with a look at fashion design and trends dictated by the great fashion houses throughout the 20th century, giving us the opportunity to compare the clothes worn by the population of the Republic of Moldova with the fashions and major stylistic trends of the past century.