#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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Exhibitions

“Academician Alexei Shchusev. Life and Works" 150 years since the birth

Within the European Heritage Days

September 28 – October 15, 2023

The exhibition is dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the birth of the famous architect Alexei Shchusev, corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

The future architect and academician was born on September 26, 1873 in Chisinau. He graduated from Male Gymnasium no. 2 in Chisinau (1891) and the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in Saint Petersburg (1897).

After the successful restoration of St. Basil Church in Ovruch, he was awarded the title of academician of architecture (1910).

He was a teacher at the Vkhutemas Art School (1918-1926), president of the Moscow Architectural Society (1921-1929), director of the Tretyakov Gallery (1926-1929). In 1946, he was appointed director of the Museum of Russian Architecture in Moscow, which today bears his name.

In 1947, in the house where he was born and raised, the Museum of Architecture and Construction Technologies of the City of Chisinau was opened, renamed after the death of the architect into the House Museum of Alexei Shchusev (1949).

The exhibition "Academician Alexei Shchusev. Life and Works" brings together about 150 museum showpieces from the holdings of the National Museum of History of Moldova: works of art, photographs, documents, books, objects of numismatics and philately, other relics intended to reconstruct unknown pages from the life and activity of the famous architect.

At the beginning of his career, Alexei Shchusev was inspired by religious themes. Among the many monuments designed by the architect, one can admire the Church of the Holy Trinity in the village of Cuhurestii de Sus of the Republic of Moldova.

Design projects for the Square of the Cathedral, the Chisinau Theater, the Government House, the quarter of the State University of Moldova, the Măzărache and Râșcani hills, the banks of the Bîc River presented to visitors for the first time are just some of the projects developed by academician Alexei Shchusev, which were to be brought to life within the framework of the Urban Plan for the Reconstruction and Rehabilitation of Post-War Chisinau. Unfortunately, they did not progress beyond the project stage.

The exhibition is conceived as a tribute to the famous architect and academician on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of his birth. It is addressed to specialists in the field, as well as to the general public interested in the life and work of Alexei Shchusev.