#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.

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Events Archive

Book launch: "History of Bessarabia, Vol. II: At the dawn of Romanian civilization. From the middle of the 1st millennium until the formation of the centralized medieval state among the romanians", author: Ion Turcanu

November 16, 2022

On November 16, in the Conference Hall of the National Musuem of History of Moldova took place the launch of the monography "The History of Bessarabia, Vol. II: At the dawn of Romanian civilization. From the middle of the 1st millennium to the formation of the centralized medieval state among the Romanians", signed by Ion Țurcanu, appeared this year at Publishing House Știința.

The work represents an academic synthesis based on the latest historiographic achievements and historical sources (written, archaeological, linguistic, anthropological, etc.), regarding the process of the formation of the Romanian civilization and the medieval state in the historical province of Bessarabia.

The present volume, the second after the one published in 2016, covers the history of Bessarabia from the end of Antiquity until the formation of the medieval state by the Romanians. In the first part of the book are researched the realities of the Pruto-Dnistrian area from the second half of the 1st millennium (7th-10th centuries), especially the way of life of the autochthonous, Romanic population, but also the issue of the transient presence in that territory of many nomadic peoples. In the second part, the author focuses on the specifics of Romanian society from the first centuries of the second millennium, the genesis of urban life and the appearance of the first cities, as well as on the inclusion of Bessarabia within the early Moldavian state. In the third part of the book, the problem of the emergence of the name Bessarabia is investigated, a task carried out by the parallel examination of the cartographic information and its relation to the existing documentary data and to the various historical sources.

Alongside the author, during the event, with speeches participated Dr. hab., university professor Gheorghe Postică, Dr. Ion Tentiuc, Dr. hab. Ion Mereuță and the redactor of the monography Mihai Papuc.