#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

"Memory of War"

(May 6 – June 28, 2010)

The Second World War is one of the most tragic pages in the history of mankind. It brought to death millions of people and caused incalculable material losses. Moldova also took many hardships of the war. Thousands of the Moldavians have been killed by enemy bullets on the fronts of the war; thousands of villages, houses, industrial buildings, farms have been erased to the ground during the bombing and military operations.

The best gesture of gratitude of the contemporaries to the generation that passed through the crucible of war, and especially to those who have fallen in battles, would be to keep the memory, to transmit from generation to generation their names and deeds.

The exhibition “Memory of War” is dedicated to the 65th anniversary of the Victory over fascism and is to commemorate all the victims of the war irrespective of which side of the barricades they were. In it some museum items are exhibited for the first time: photographs, books, posters, military uniforms, weapons, soldiers’ personal belongings, front letters, war trophies, awards, etc. – the historical relics aimed to reconstruct the tragic events of the Second World War, crimes of fascism, the brotherhood in arms and the joy of victory.

Most of the exhibits are from the collections of the National Museum of Archaeology and History of Moldova and are divided into several conventional sections: The Beginning of War, The “New Order” instituted by the fascists in Europe, The Creation of Antifascist Coalition, The Liberation of the Peoples of Europe from the Fascist Occupation, The Fall of Fascism, and The Nuremberg Trials.

A special section of the exhibition includes photographs, documents and personal belongings of our citizens who participated in the biggest military operations during the war and were decorated with high military honors for heroism on the battlefields (D. Calaras, I. Coval, N. Lebedenko, I. Soltas, F. Zharchinsky, V. Ermuratsky, G. Odobescu, and others).

The exhibition is complemented by a collection of posters of the time and works of art on the military subjects created by the prominent painters (I. Toidze, M. Grecu, A. David, A.Vasiliev, V. Obuh, and others), as well as books on the history of the Second World War.