#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

“Fighting and suffering: Polish citizens during World War II”

Poland remembers the tragedy of the war

November 2-30, 2019

Eighty years after the outbreak of World War II, Poland, its first victim, recalls the most dramatic armed conflict in world history. The exhibition which will be open in the hall of the National Museum of History of Moldova in Chișinău until the end of November speaks about this historical event.

The exhibition "Fighting and suffering. The Polish citizens during World War II" presents the fate of Poland during the war, which, on September 1, 1939, was attacked by Germany, and on September 17, by the Soviet Union.

Despite the numerical superiority of the occupiers, the Poles have had, throughout the entire world war, a strong armed resistance, both on the territory of their country and on other fronts and battlefields around the world.

The exhibition has on display 16 panels which present the most important moments from those days. Great attention is paid to the destinies of the civilian population. This rich material is represented by archive photographs obtained from the archives of different countries, including from the Romanian collections.

The story of the war drama, which was prepared by one of the most modern museums in the world - the World War II Museum in Gdansk, as well as by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Polish Republic, will be presented in over 60 countries of the world.

The Polish Institute in Bucharest has prepared the Romanian version, enriching it with topics related to the Polish-Romanian relations during World War II, but also with photos obtained from the National Archives of Romania, which illustrates the lives of 60-100 thousand Polish refugees in Romania.

The exhibition has already been presented in the Romanian Senate in Bucharest, at the Museum of Bucovina in Suceava, as well the Museum of the Palace of Culture in Iași, at the initiative of the Polish Institute in Bucharest.

The Ambassador of the Polish Republic to Moldova, Bartlomiej Zdaniuk and the Deputy Director of the Polish Institute in Bucharest, Wojciech Mrozovsky, at the presentation of the exhibition on 15 November 2019, stressed the importance of intercultural relations between the Republic of Moldova and the Polish Republic as well as the need for such events for the contemporary society.

The drama of the Polish people during the second world conflagration, victim of the aggressive and expansionist politics of two totalitarian regimes - Nazi and Bolshevik - remains a broad and very actual topic.

The National Museum of History of Moldova, Chișinău, the hall on the ground floor, November 2-30, 2019. Free admission.