30.1.2016
The visitors were delighted by the valuable exhibits which bear witness to the rich history of (tele)communications in Croatia and by the excellent curators of the HT Museum.
On Friday, 29 January, from 6 PM to 1 AM, the traditional event “Night of Museums” took place for the 11th time in a row and saw the successful participation of our HT Museum counting 1137 visitors – a record attendance number so far.
It was uplifting to see such a large number of young people interested in the development of Croatian telecommunications. Even the semi-final match of the European Handball Championship held at the exact date of the event and featuring the Croatian National Team could not adversely affect the number of visitors.
The visitors could see the exhibition “Let’s All-IP Talk – an Exhibition on Development of Telephony in Croatia from the 19th Century to the Present Day”, which presented the various phases in the development of telephony by display of telephone exchanges and related telephone sets. Visitors could see not only the functional demonstration unit with exchange from the end of the 19th century, but also a part of the first Croatian and Zagreb automatic telephone exchange of the “Strowger-Siemens” system dating back to the year 1928, as well as a crossbar telephone exchange, which marked the decentralisation of telephone traffic in 1955 in Zagreb, and a module of the recently dismantled electronic telephone exchange of the AXE system, which had played a significant role in the digitalisation of national telephone traffic.
Vesna Lipovac, curator of the HT Museum, readily answered the questions of interested visitors
Visitors were particularly attracted by the exhibited optical fibre cables and joints, but also by one of the first analogue mobile telephone sets used in the early nineties.
Visitors could also see the permanent exhibition illustrating the development of the messenger service, of post and telecommunications on the territory of the Republic of Croatia from Roman times to the present day. The exhibition’s attractiveness was also attested by the fact that several school classes came to visit the HT Museum even from the town of Ivanec (Varaždin County), and their teachers, satisfied by what they had seen, decided to revisit the Museum with new students.
Visitors could learn everything about exchanges from the curator Goran Rajič
This year again, visitors were offered refreshments, the already traditional jam doughnuts, and juices. A particular surprise, delighting all visitors, was the prize-winning contest in which they could participate by posting photos from the Museum on social network profiles (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter).
According to data provided by the Croatian Museum Association, the Night of Museums saw the attendance of more than 325,000 visitors in 100 cities and 216 institutions at more than 250 locations.
Zagreb recorded a total of more than 140,000 visits.