#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

Opening of the "Borders" exhibition of the multimedia artist Valeria Barbas

April 26, 2023

On April 26, 2023, in the hall on the ground floor of the National Museum of History of Moldova, the opening of the multimedia exhibition "Borders" took place, which represents a unique collaboration between the artist Dr. Valeria Barbas and the Museum and the Archives of the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova.

At the opening event of the exhibition, the author of the exhibition Dr. Valeria Barbas, Deputy Director of NMHM Livia Sîrbu, Vice-Rector of ULIM dr. hab. Elena Prus, art critic, Prof. Dr., Eleonora Brigalda and Marcela Nistor, deputy in the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova.

Opened symbolically on the eve of the Tricolor Day, marked annually on April 27, the "Borders" exhibition includes a retrospective of the crucial events that marked the Republic of Moldova in the three decades of independence, with April 7, 2009 as the axis of reference. The exhibition includes presented various artistic mediums, including 10 paintings from the series created by the artist Valeria Barbas over two decades, audio-video installations and objects saved from the fire of April 7, 2009. The exhibition presents for the first time a collaboration between various historical and art mediums contemporary, in which the concept of borders is viewed from various perspectives, whether geographical, historical, or of an internal nature, of mentality.

During the events of 7 April 2009, a significant part of the collection of documents in the Archives of the Parliament was destroyed in a fire. The exhibition presents objects and documents recovered from the burned building, including a flag. The visitors of the exhibition will have the opportunity to see for the first-time various objects and documents that remember the crucial events of the past of the Republic of Moldova and which are symbolic of the period of its independence.

The "Borders" exhibition can be visited between April 26 and May 10, 2023, in the ground floor hall of the National Museum of History of Moldova, 31 August 1989 street, 121A.