#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

Exhibitions

„The clock over time”

May 18, 2017 – May 18, 2018

The exhibition is the result of research of the collection of watches from the National Museum of History of Moldova. The 150 watches displayed in the exhibition for the public reveal the evolution of the means of measuring time and of their makers as this activity was a constant concern and passion of man since Antiquity. The most valuable piece in the exhibition is the clock, as a heritage object, remarkable both by the sophisticated technique and the value of the materials used, as well as by the personality of their owners. It is a pioneering exhibition; a large part of the collection of watches (more than two hundred pieces) is being exhibited for the first time. The collection on display consists of various types of watches classified according to the method of operation and use.

The objects in the exhibition are authentic, original, part of them have undergone through restoration and conservation procedure, and therefore some of them are functional. Chronologically, the pieces in the exhibition are dated to the end of the 18th century to the middle of the 20th century.

Typologically, the most attractive are the wall and floor clocks from the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, whose mechanisms are housed in impressive boxes (furniture type), made by well-known watchmakers and companies like Gustav Becker, Junghans, Philip Haas, Le roi à Paris, Lenzkirch, and others. In the ambiance of the museum space are exhibited watches of historical value: the wall clock from the Chisinau Real School (by M. Karcevski), the wall clock from the headquarters of the first working-class club in the city of Balta, the clock at the Railway Station From the town of Tighina (Bender). A special value has the wall clock which belonged to the family of Ivan Şpiller, a well-known watchmaker from Chișinău with Austrian origins, who in the middle of the 19th century had one of the largest and most important clock stores in the city. He was one of the craftsmen who "took care" of the clock on the Arch of Triumph during the years 1842-1849 and 1853-1862.

A very interesting history have also the office and fireplace clocks, followed by pocket watches, originally considered as a men's accessory, later replaced by wristwatches.

A special place in the museum exhibition is held by the watches of memorial value: the watch belonging to Zinaida Radu-Maiorova (1890-?) and Dumitru Remenco (1895-1940), Bessarabians participants in the Great War (1914-1918), the watches of academician Nicolae Dimo (1873-1959), writer Petrea Darienco (1923-1976), well-known archaeologist and museographer Vsevolod Marchevici (1917-1997), musicologist Serafim Buzilă (1937-1998) and others.

The exhibition is complemented by mini-vintage interiors and photographic images.