#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

Valuable donation of Romanian stamps

November 25, 2022

On the eve of the National Day of Romania, the National Museum of History of Moldova had a historical moment with a special sentimental significance. The Romanian collector Ilie Picioruș donated to the museum a valuable and impressive collection of Romanian stamps, unstamped, from the 1965-1999 period. Noble gesture worthy of all admiration and gratitude. The donation includes 2,887 stamps with a very diverse theme: historical events and personalities, historical monuments, culture, education, sports, fauna, flora, etc. The collection is accompanied by a set of specialized works that will facilitate the work of identifying, describing and inventorying the new pieces entered into the museum's heritage.

The participants of the event were surprised to learn that in addition to being a passionate collector, Mr. Ilie Picioruș is, first of all, an excellent professional who has made an extraordinary career in the field of jurisprudence in Romania. He is a graduate of the Faculty of Law of the University of Bucharest and of the National Defense College attached to the Academy of Advanced Military Studies. Between 1980 and 1990, he worked as a prosecutor, initially at the local Prosecutor's Office of sectors 3 and 6, then at the Bucharest City Prosecutor's Office and at the General Prosecutor's Office.

In gratitude for this noble gesture and the significant contribution to the development of the collection of the National History Museum of Moldova, Mr. Ilie Picioruș was awarded with the Honorary Diploma of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Moldova