#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

International Collaboration

2015

Dr. hab. Elena Ploșnița, scientific secretary of the museum, participated between 22 and 27 February, 2015 at training on museum documentation in Warsaw and Gdańsk, Poland, organized and funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland.

National Museum of History of Moldova in cooperation with the Department Europe-Asia of the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin continued in 2015 (between May 29 and July 5) field archaeological research in the surroundings of v. Sofia, Drochia at the Eneolithic settlement "Petreni" (Cucuteni-Trypillian culture), dated with the 5th millennia BC.

MNIM was partner in project "Early urbanism in prehistoric Europe: the case of Trypillian mega-sites" initiated by the University of Durham, England and the Institute of Archaeology in Kiev, Ukraine. The project had final goal the organization of an international exhibition about the history of Cucuteni-Trypillian proto-cities, which was presented in all project countries. In Chișinău, the exhibition "Trypillian Mega-sites" was on display from September 9 to November 6, 2015.

Based on the agreement with the National Museum Complex "Moldova" from Iași, Romania, the exhibition "Heritage values from the collection of the Museum of Science and Technique Ştefan Procopiu, Iași" was organized at MNIM in the period from September 23 to October 26, 2015.

The National Museum of History of Moldova in collaboration with the Institute of Archaeology „Vasile Pârvan" from Bucharest, Romania, organized the 25th edition of the Symposium of Numismatics on October 29-30, 2015. The event was attended by numismatists researchers from Romania, Ukraine and Moldova.

MNIM has participated in the exhibition "Krieg - Eine Archaeologishe Spuresuche" (War - decoding archaeological traces), open for visiting from November 5, 2015 - May 22, 2016 at the Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte in Halle, Germany. An international team of museums from Germany, Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Austria, Czech Republic and Moldova participated at the organization of the exhibition. Our museum was present with 14 archaeological pieces from the Eneolithic period unearthed during research on the tumulus of Giurgiulești.

Mariana Sîrbu, researcher in the sector Archaeology and Ancient History, participated at the Autumn School for PhD students in ancient history and archaeology in Valea Alunului, com. Boșorod, jud. Hunedoara, România on October 3-11, 2015. The school was organized by the Educational Center of „Dacica" Foundation.

Dr. Natalia Mateevici, researcher in the sector Archaeology and Ancient History obtained a research fellowship for archaeological documentation at the Archaeological School in Athens in the period November 1 - December 1, 2015.

Mariana Vasilache, researcher in the sector of Archaeology and Ancient History, had an archaeological documentation visit at the Prehistoric Museum from Halle, Germany, part of project „Krieg - Eine Archaeologishe Spuresuche", November 1-10, 2015.