#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

"What your eye does not see"

October 16 – November 13, 2023

Scanning electron microscopy is an effective tool for studying and evaluating all stages of the construction life cycle (raw materials, fabrication, installation in a structure, use, recycling/reuse).

In any scientific discipline, not only the applied scientific method is of vital importance, but also the scientific tools used. One of the great advances in the world of science took place in 1942, with the development of the scanning electron microscope, which, with a resolution between 3 and 20 nm, allows the observation of the surface of samples at magnifications of up to 250000x, which gave rise to some important advances in understanding the structure and composition of building materials, as well as the phenomena and reactions that occur in their interaction with the environment.

Visitors to this exhibition will have the opportunity to appreciate, through a collection of 21 photographs taken with a scanning electron microscope, a detail of various materials that cannot be seen with the naked eye, thus approaching the spectacular world of images in the field nanoscience and therefore the different themes and lines of research that develop at the Eduardo Torroja Institute of Construction Sciences in Spain.

Curators: Esperanza Menéndez, Maximina Romero; Coordination and concept: Rogelio Sánchez; Graphics and layout: Carmen Aragonés

The exhibition of photomicrographs "What your eyes does not see" can be seen between October 16 - November 13, on the fence of the National Museum of History of Moldova, str. 31 August 1989 121A, Chisinau.