#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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Creative workshop dedicate to family coat of arms

May 13th, 2018

On the occasion of the International Family Day, the Public Relations and Museum Education Department organized a workshop on "My Family's Coat of arms" for parents and children.

The workshop had a theoretical and practical part. In the first part, the workshop coordinator, Natalia Popovici, spoke to the children about heraldry, coat-of-arms, coats and the symbols that make up them, using pictures and illustrations as didactic material.

In the second part, the participants were urged to create a family coat of arms, an emblem to represent them and to tell the other participants something about themselves and their relatives. This stage of work has been differently experienced by each child, the process of selecting symbols as well as their illustration through various techniques is quite representative for their personalities.

At the end of this meeting, each of the participants presented their own coat of arms of the family. The questions and the answers that followed at each intervention were additional opportunities for interaction, mutual knowledge and insight into the elements that distinguish us, but especially those which unite us.

The children were careful about the details and they all managed through their work to go home with a blazon of their own family, designed and made by themselves.

The educational activity "My Family's coat of arms" was organized in collaboration with the Origami Moldova Center.