#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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International Scientific Conference „The Chronology of the Pre-Roman Iron Age and early Roman Age in Central and South-East Europe: Problems and Perspectives”

Chişinău, 8-9 November 2018

The National Museum of History of Moldova in collaboration with the Moldova State University and the Ion Creangă State Pedagogical University with the support of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation organized the international scientific conference The Chronology of the Pre-Roman Iron Age and early Roman Age in Central and South-East Europe: Problems and Perspectives¶.

The event was held from 8 to 9 November 2018 at the National Museum of History of Moldova and the Moldova State University.

The conference was attended by Alexander von Humboldt Foundation scholars, as well as other researchers from Germany, Poland, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Republic of Moldova, and other countries.

The topic selected for discussion approached one of the many, but very important facets of the history of European Barbaricum in the maturation and flourishing period of Greek-Roman civilization. Remained outside the parameters that define classical antiquity, a large part of the European continent, although it has been, in one way or another, in the orbit of the impulses that came from the world of Greek-Roman civilization, nevertheless had its own development paths. Against the background of complicated processes from the La Tène period and the early Roman Age, determined by multiple human mobility within this world and by important intercalations of Barbaricum with the Greco-Roman world, it has experienced the cultural interference which perception is in strict dependence on the exact determination of chronological references. It is not accidental that this question was given central attention throughout the entire study period of the subject. Beyond the enormous efforts that have been made over the centuries, resulted in important findings, there are many other problems that are just waiting for solutions that archaeologists are looking at with much optimism. In this sense, the optimism of researchers comes to be justified by both the diversification of the methods applied in cutting-edge science (based upon the effervescent evolution of technologies) and by the interdisciplinary character of modern studies. An update and a systematization of the results achieved over recent years, connected to the previous ones, are likely to provide a radiograph of the quality of the situation in the field, defining the momentary problems, but also designing forward-looking solutions.

In this way, the planned conference at Humboldt-Kolleg represented an excellent opportunity for a new round of discussions dedicated to studying Barbaricum archaeology in the La Tène Period and the Early Imperial Roman Period.

For more information: https://www.nationalmuseum.md/en/humboldt_kolleg/