General excursion over the museum. The first turn of the new exposition had been prepared by the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg. Its first section is devoted to postal communication. It illustrates the centuries-old history of Russian Post having started with transporting correspondence via messengers and come up to the present-day postal service technologies. There are original 19th century sleigh and scale models of other means of transporting mail, bells for a horse shaft-bows, postal horns, postmen badges, bags and trunks. After introduction of the postal stationary envelopes in 1845, and later on postage stamps, mail boxes appeared on the streets; letter boxes from several goubernyas (provinces), mail boxes for wrappers and parcels, letter boxes with indicators of the time of next correspondence pick-up, old automatic stamp-vending machines. A scale model of the Chateau semaphore, or visual telegraph, widely used in Russia and Europe in 1830-ies, opens the exposition section devoted to the history of telegraphy in Russia. The original electromagnetic telegraph device invented by P.L. Schilling in 1832 is amongst the unique exhibits here. This very invention had begun the epoch of practicable electric telegraphy; its evolution is represented in the exposition by the S. Morse telegraph for transmitting messages in Morse Code, the D. Hughes type-printing telegraph, the G. Caselli facsimile telegraph, the “Neva” photo-telegraph, the N. Trousevich teletypewriter and others. The J.P. Reis, A.G. Bell first telephone devices, the D. Hughes carbon microphone, transmitting-receiving telephone tubes, telephones of various systems represent major developments in telephony. There are also exhibits of switchgear: telephone exchange of the first Russian long-distance telephone line that connected St.-Petersburg and Moscow (1898), step-by-step switch for the electromechanical automatic telephone exchange station, the V.I. Kovalenkov electron tube telephone amplifier, and other equipment. The Museum is named after an outstanding Russian physicist and inventor prof. A. S. Popov, who first in the world demonstrated radio signals transmission, and memorial collection of the devices and appliances used by him in his experiments is duly presented at the exposition. Diverse pieces of radio equipment made in the Nijegorodsky Radio Laboratory, a short-waveband radio transmitter, the A.V. Losev "Kristadin" radio receiver, transistor devices, various radio-sets well illustrate the history of radio communication development. The exposition section devoted to the history of television and TV-broadcasting begins with display of unique devices of the first systems of mechano-optical television. It appears that first practicable ideas in electronic television were suggested by B.L. Rosing, who had invented the world’s first electronic receiving television tube, model of which is on display here. There is the first electronic transmitting tube, iconoscope, first Russian electronic TV-sets, “ÒÊ-1”, “17ÒÍ-1”, produced before 1941. Here one can see and first widely popular in the USSR TV-set “ÊÂÍ-49”, the “ÊÒ-116” colour television transmitting camera, a scale model of the antenna tower of the Ostankinsky TV-centre in Moscow, and some other exhibits. The new exposition is supported by multimedia equipment, it allows visitors to see visual demonstration of the functioning principles of some unique historical devices and apparatuses on display and watch old documentary reels. |
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