#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

Journal „Tyragetia"

vol. IX [XXIV], nr. 2

Bessarabian daily newspapers as a means of advertising. From the collection of periodicals of NMHM (end of 19th - early 20th centuries)

ISSN 1857-0240
E-ISSN 2537-6330

Vera Serjant

Bessarabian daily newspapers as a means of advertising. From the collection of periodicals of NMHM (end of 19th - early 20th centuries)

Tyragetia, serie nouă, vol. IX [XXIV], nr. 2, Istorie. Muzeologie Chișinău, 2015

Abstract

Newspapers began to be used as a means of advertising since the end of the 19th century and remained the primary means of advertising until the advent of television. Due to short period of time between the submitting advertising material for publication and its appearance in the newspaper, advertising in daily newspapers was very eﬀective for transmitting the latest information to the consumer. Daily newspapers usually came out in large cities and capitals.

The ﬁrst daily newspaper in Bessarabia was Bessarabsky Vestnik ("Bessarabian Messenger") published in 1889 in ChiТinău by E. Sokolova. Other major daily newspapers published for a long time in ChiТinău were Bessarabets ("Bessarabian"), Bessarabskaya zhizn ("Bessarabian Life"), Drug ("Friend"), Golos Kishinyova ("Voice of Chișinău"), and some others. During 1912-1914, the daily newspapers appear in Bălți, Bender, Soroca, Tiraspol, and Akkerman.

The museum's collection of periodicals contains a small amount of daily newspapers published in Bessarabia at the end of 19th - early 20th centuries. The museum has only one issue of the newspaper Bessarabsky Vestnik (no. 1177 of November 2, 1894), two issues of the newspaper Bessarabets (no. 248 of December 19, 1897 and no. 135 of December 1, 1905), an issue of the newspaper Drug (no. 143 of June 6, 1909), 33 issues of the newspaper Bessarabskaya zhizn for 1916-1917, and 12 issues of the newspaper Znamya ("Banner") for 1911-1912. Znamya, published by M. Radchenko and V. Yakubovich in ChiТinău during 1911-1914, is actually a continuation of the newspaper Drug, which changed the name because of the persecution of the tsarist censorship. The collection also contains 8 issues of the newspaper Bessarabsky Yuzhnyi Kray ("Bessarabian Southern Region") published in Bender by D. Natenzon during 1914-1917.

The review of this collection makes a signiﬁcant contribution to the study of the history of advertising in Bessarabia under the tsarist autocracy.

List of illustrations:
1. Newspaper Drug no. 143 of June 6, 1909, p. 1.
2. Newspaper Drug no. 143 of June 6, 1909, p. 4.
3. Newspaper Bessarabets no. 248 of December 19, 1897, p. 1.
4. Newspaper Bessarabets no. 248 of December 19, 1897, p. 4.
5. Newspaper Bessarabsky Yuzhnyi Kray no. 1552 of August 10, 1917, p. 1.
6. Newspaper Bessarabsky Yuzhnyi Kray no. 1552 of August 10, 1917, p. 4.
7. Newspaper Bessarabsky Vestnik no. 1177 of November 2, 1894, p. 1.
8. Newspaper Bessarabsky Vestnik no. 1177 of November 2, 1894, p. 4.
9. Newspaper Bessarabskaya zhizn no. 208 of August 17, 1916, p. 1.
10. Newspaper Bessarabskaya zhizn no. 208 of August 17, 1916, p.4.
11. Newspaper Bessarabskaya zhizn no. 206 of August 15, 1916, p.1.
12. Newspaper Bessarabskaya zhizn no. 206 of August 15, 1916, p. 4.
13. Front page of the newspaper Znamya no. 271 of November 28, 1912.