#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.

Virtual Tour

Chronological Axis

Bronze Age

(early 3rd millennium B.C. – late 2nd millennium B.C.)

The Bronze Age is a cultural and historical period characterized by the appearance and spreading of items made of bronze – the first metal created artificially. In the Carpathian-Dniester area the first bronze objects appear in the early 3^rd millennium B.C., becoming the most widespread to the end of the Age. Along with bronze items, the material culture is also represented by ceramic vessels of different shapes, decorated and plain, and implements made of stone, bone, and horn. Characteristic of this period is the presence of burial mound complexes.

The Bronze Age consists of three stages, each one having the peculiarities of archaeological cultures, which form it.

The Early Bronze Age (middle of 3^rd millennium – early 2^nd millennium B.C.) is represented by the Ochre Graves culture (Yamna culture), the representatives of which are identified with the ancient Indo-Europeans [7]. In this period there are also included the Catacomb Graves culture [1] and the Edinet culture [5, 6]. The material culture of the population is notable for the presence of battle axes with irreproachably processed surfaces [1].

The Middle Bronze Age (early 2^nd millennium – middle of 2^nd millennium B.C.) is represented by the culture of pottery ornamented with many bolsters, of the Eurasian origin, and the Komarov culture [8], the last being a peripheral expression of the Bronze Age cultures from Poland and Western Ukraine.

The Late Bronze Age (middle of 2^nd millennium – late 2^nd millennium B.C.) is characterized by the emergence of the Noua-Sabatinovka-Coslogeni cultural complex, which combined elements of the Eurasian and Carpathian-Balkan origin, including vessels with handles [9]. The representatives of this cultural complex inhabited a vast territory from the North Pontic steppes to the Transylvanian Plateau. These communities were mainly engaged in cattle-breeding. The peculiarity of the Late Bronze Age is the presence of hoards with bronze items. In the Museum collection there are many such unique objects: axes, daggers, sickles, needles, vessels, adornments, and votive items [2, 3, 4].

1.Battle axe-hummer, the Catacomb culture