#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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Publications

Albums

Ana Niculiţă

Ancient Jewelry from the Collections of the National Museum of History of Moldova (Catalog)

Series “Albums” III, Chişinău, 2018. 296 p. ISBN 978-9975-87-442-7.

This work presents to the reader the valuable historical adornments, familiarizes him with the artistic taste and the high level of craftsmanship of their creators, giving him the opportunity to take a journey in the depths of the ages to make an imagination of both the material world and the spiritual life of people of bygone eras.

The work Ancient Jewelry from the Collections of the National Museum of History of Moldova (Catalog) comprises a collection of over 2 thousand ornaments and objects of toreutics made of gold and silver, mostly discovered during the archaeological investigations in different types of sites dating from the Eneolithic to the late Middle Ages located on the present territory of the Republic of Moldova. Much of the items come from randomly discovered hoards of jewelry or hoards consisting of artifacts and coins.

The work includes three main parts.

The first chapter describes the objects of jewelry and toreutics discovered at archaeological sites of different historical periods.

The next chapter presents the hoards of ornaments or of artifacts and coins.

The objects are presented according to the following categories: adornments (earrings, temporal rings, rings, torcs, necklaces), clothing accessories (sewn-on plaques for headwear and clothing, buttons, fibulae), objects of toreutics (parts of horse harness, phalerae, scepter clips). A general characterization of the relevant historical period is also provided, complemented by information on the technique of manufacturing items. Each archaeological site is marked on a map corresponding to the historical period to which the artifacts are attributed.

The third part, the most significant, is the Catalog. Each object, or group of objects, is illustrated in color, for some items, details of the ornament, manufacturing techniques and other data are presented. For each artifact (or artifacts in the same category), there are given the name, type, place of discovery and type of archaeological site, the finder and the year of finding, the brief description: the metal of which the object is made (gold, silver), the metal purity, weight, dimensions, chronological framework, place of storage and inventory number, and selective bibliography.