#Exhibit of the Month

The main parts of the camera include the body, bellows, lens, and viewfinder system. The body consists of two lacquered walnut wood frames, joined by a folding black textile bellows that allows the necessary extension for focusing. On the front panel is the Agfa anastigmat lens, mounted in a Compur-type shutter produced by F. Deckel in Munich. It features a foldable "brilliant" viewfinder for both portrait and landscape orientation. It uses glass photographic plates coated with a photographic emulsion, mounted in walnut wood holders, with a frame size of 9x12 cm.
The walnut wood model, considered the flagship "Agfa Isolar Luxus," was designed by the A.H. Rietzschel factory in Munich, acquired by AGFA in 1925, which continued producing this type of camera under its own name until the late 1920s.
The piece was restored by Mihail Culașco, Restoration Department of NMHM.
Brief History of the Camera
The history of the camera spans 200 years, evolving from the camera obscura to today's digital devices. Key milestones include: the first permanent photograph in 1826 by French physicist Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, using a wooden box and a plate coated with bitumen of Judea; the invention of the first photographic process - daguerreotype - in 1839 by Frenchman Louis Daguerre, marking the official birth of photography; the invention of calotype, based on the negative/positive principle, by British physicist and chemist Fox Talbot; the invention of wet collodion plates by Englishman Frederick Scott Archer and dry glass plates by Richard Leach Maddox and John Huds Bennet; the introduction of flexible roll film and the launch of the first Kodak camera by American inventor George Eastman; the release of the first 35 mm film camera by German company "Leica"; the launch of the first instant camera "Polaroid," invented by American Edwin Land. Finally, starting in 1975, this path led to the digital photography revolution. Each successive step made cameras smaller and faster, significantly improving image quality.
The first photographic studio in Chișinău was opened in 1854 by Eduard Glewski, and before World War I, there were already about 100 photography studios in Bessarabia.
The collection of the National Museum of History of Moldova includes over 30 cameras, made in Austria, Germany, France, USSR, Japan, and China, dating from the late 19th century to the 2000s. Among them are folding bellows cameras, BOX-type cameras, single-lens reflex (SLR) and twin-lens reflex (TLR) cameras, as well as digital (DSLR) cameras.

Virtual Tour

Events Archive

Presentation of a series of postage stamps „Exhibits from the Treasury of the National Museum of Archaeology and History of Moldova. The Cucuteni-Tripolye Culture”

January 25, 2011

Tuesday, January 25, in one of the rooms of the permanent exhibition “History and Civilization” the presentation of a new issue of postage stamps „Exhibits from the Treasury of the National Museum of Archaeology and History of Moldova. The Cucuteni-Tripolye Culture” had place. The postage stamps were produced by the „Posta Moldovei” State Enterprise on the basis of a cooperation agreement signed with the National Museum of Archaeology and History of Moldova on January 12, 2011 for familiarization of philatelists around the world with unique items from the museum’s collections.

The new series consists of three postage stamps (nominal value of 0.85, 1.20, and 8.50 MDL) and a miniature sheet with the representations of artifacts of the Cucuteni-Tripolye culture, one of the most important archaeological culture in the Northern Pontic Area and one of the oldest civilizations in the Europe of the 5th – 4th millennia B.C.. On the postage stamps there are the representations of an anthropomorphic amphora with a lid (5th millennium B.C.) discovered in the Radulenii Vechi hoard (Floresti District), a biconical vessel with zoomorphic representations (4th millennium B.C.) from the Varvareuca hoard (Floresti District), and a biconical vessel with anthropomorphic representations (4th millennium B.C.) from the Sofia hoard (Drochia District).

The miniature sheet contains 4 postage stamps. Stamps from the miniature sheet are identical to those in large sheets. Additional printing on the sheet reproduces the image of the monument “Roman She-Wolf with Romulus and Remus” against the background of the building of the National Museum of Archaeology and History of Moldova.

The event was attended by representatives of the „Posta Moldovei” State Enterprise and the National Museum of Archaeology and History of Moldova, the most inveterate philatelists, and the mass-media. On this occasion, they took possession of the first exemplars of envelops with the postage stamps in question with the special stamp “first day of issue”.