Category: RRI Encyclopaedia

Broadcasting owes an important part of its functioning over time to the reel-to-reel tape recorder. Numerous archives in the world are still on analog media, and the reel-to-reel tape recorder is the equipment to which this huge and invaluable legacy is due. An invention of the first decades of the 20th century, the steel-wire reel tape recorder is the first in the history of broadcasting used to record voices. But the first magnetic tape recorder, produced by the German corporation AEG and first used in 1935, would be the starting point for several generations of magnetic tape equipment that will dominate the audio market in the second half of the 20th century.

Radio Romania kept up with the times, and equipping technicians and journalists with tape recorders to do their job was a priority. A technical history of the Romanian Radio includes in its pages tape recorders of the highest performance. And many stories still unwritten have the tape recorder as a hero. Engineer Ilie Drăgan, who held the position of technical director, was interviewed in 2000 by the Oral History Center of Romanian Broadcasting. He joined Radio Romania in 1958, and was head of the Transmissions department, which operated the technical equipment.

“I remember that we were making transmissions with some equipment on electronic tubes, we called them CN, and in order to have a backup power supply, we used some 110 Volt batteries, so-called ‘bricks’. They were, in volume, the size of two bricks placed one on top of the other. And when we went on trips, the equipment with special cars was not at the level that exists today, we put these bricks, which were two in number, in a bag. We also took a tape recorder that often weighed over 35 kilograms, which ran on paper tape, and we would leave by train somewhere in the province to make recordings. In the conditions in which recordings were made in the agricultural field, the editors and technicians had to go to the field, to the place where the agricultural products were made, there was no electricity on site and the Transmission service was equipped with two or three generator sets that we put in the car. We would arrive at the recording site, fill them with gasoline, start them, power the tape recorders and that’s how the recordings were made in those days.”

In its equipment with tape recorders, there were four periods in the history of Radio Romania. The first was that of the war and the 1950s when tape recorders with steel wire reels were still used. From the beginning of the 1950s, the generation of magnetic tape recorders would replace tape recorders with steel wire reels. The second period was the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s when tape recorders had to be purchased from CAER, the economic association of the socialist states. In the CAER convention, Hungary was designated to produce equipment of this kind. The third period was the opening towards the West, between 1975 and 1985. Western tape recorders were clearly superior in quality and price, and Radio Romania purchased technology from Western manufacturers. The fourth period was the return to purchases from the socialist bloc, after 1985. Here is Ilie Drăgan:

“Hungary was the one recorded in the CAER treaties to produce, only the Hungarians had the right to produce tape recorders and desks. After that, the Germans also proposed a version of tape recorders, and in Czechoslovakia they produced reporting cars. We also purchased some reporting cars on Škoda buses, but they were equipped with Hungarian mixing desks and Hungarian tape recorders. Later, the Czechs managed in Bratislava to replace the Hungarian desks with desks made by Tesla Bratislava. So, in 1989, when Radio Romania bought a reporting truck that is currently in operation, they had Czech mixing desks, but Hungarian tape recorders.”

Ilie Drăgan remembered the evolution of tape recorders at Radio Romania as he encountered them in a long career of 42 years as an electronics engineer: from tape recorders that used paper tape to portable shoulder-mounted recorders.

“They were very heavy tape recorders. They were taken out of service, they weighed about 35 kilograms, two people had to carry a tape recorder to go somewhere to record. It was a pain. When you think that now an editor takes something that he holds in half a palm and makes quality recordings. After these tape recorders, some Philips Juniors appeared that were the size of a slightly larger diplomat’s bag, they also weighed about 16 kilograms. In any case, it was incomparable with the 35-kilogram one. And all the recordings were made in conditions in which the editor could not move alone and always had to take a technician with him. The Uher portable tape recorders appeared later.”

Tape recorders are now museum pieces and still arouse curiosity and attraction among those passionate about the history of science and technology. At Radio Romania, the tape recorder is still present, and coexists with the new generations of digital equipment.

In art, portraits have at least one important particularity, namely the interest in the person in the painting.

In time, people portrayed by paintings have been sovereigns, political leaders, noblemen, warriors, clergy, thinkers, but also ordinary people. Portraits of sovereigns have always exerted a great attraction for people. Marina-Cristiana Rotaru teaches English at the Technical University of Construction in Bucharest and has studied socio-semantic interpretation of portrait art. She studied royal portraits from the view point of the message transmitted by the sovereign through nonverbal communication. In this sense, she took into account the distance, the angle, the gaze and the story of the painting. And as an object of research, she stopped at one of the portraits of Queen Maria of Romania, made by the German Friedrich August von Kaulbach: “The distance does not seem to be that great. We can conclude that we are in some kind of relationship with Maria because we already know her, we know who she is, she is no longer a stranger to us. From the point of view of the vertical angle, it is not always clear whether her gaze is above our gaze or not. This does not always matter. We can say that we are more or less on the same level, we are on a kind of equality, but not equality of status, but equality of belonging, let’s say, to the same race. We already see her as our princess, she is no longer a British, foreign princess. Judging by horizontal angle, we see her in a position that is neither frontal nor in profile, it is somewhere in between. We notice that she is not looking at us, she is ignoring us, she has something against us, she is angry with us or she wants to tell us something else. We also look at her gaze, she is slightly melancholic. We also look at her clothing, we see that she has some flowers, some roses, and we wonder why she put those on?”

The story of the painting seems to be a decisive criterion in knowing what the future sovereign wants to tell us: “We know from books, from her autobiographic book, that when she came to the country it was very difficult for her. Her first years were hard years, naturally, because she had come to a country that for her was Terra incognita. She did not know the language, she did not know the customs, she did not know, in fact, anyone. The only lady companion that King Carol had given her was a lady much older than her, who was only 17. She was still a child, in fact. An English lady stayed with her for a while, then went back to England. And she suddenly finds herself alone among strangers, as even her husband was a stranger. And then, what happens to the individual when being suddenly alone among strangers? They go through what we today call culture shock and we know that there are stages of culture shock. The first stage is called the honeymoon, and in Maria’s case this month had passed very quickly. After that comes the stage of disorientation. You look left, right, you don’t know anyone, you don’t know where to go, you don’t know what to do with yourself? After the disorientation stage comes an even harder one, the stage of irritability and hostility when everything seems to be against you and, whether you want it or not, you enter a kind of depression. I suspect that this is what happened to Princess Maria and the portrait, I suspect, captures the princess during this period.”

Searching for oneself in a new situation is something that every human being goes through, and therefore also a crowned head. Even if public opinion would say that a sovereign has everything at his disposal, it is not exactly accurate. Maria of Romania had to overcome important obstacles in her life, as we can see from the painting analyzed by Marina-Cristina Rotaru: “In such moments, people ask themselves questions, such as who am I? What am I doing here? What is wrong with me here? But, first of all, it is the question Who am I? That’s where it starts, from this question comes the answer she wants, from this question appears the anchor she ties herself to in order to rise from that situation. And, probably, in response to Maria’s question, she puts some roses on her chest. Is the choice random? I suspect not. And we go back to her story. She comes to the country as a British princess, an identity element to which she has remained faithful all her life. We know that in Great Britain, the historical region we know as England has the rose as its symbol. What Maria puts on her chest is the Rose of England. She couldn’t scream: I am a British princess! I come from the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha dynasty. She understands, she realizes, what her role is and that through Ferdinand’s marriage to her, the Romanian dynasty suddenly gained a different weight.”

The portraits of sovereigns have life and, therefore, words. And that of Queen Maria of Romania is one from which we learn about a huge personality in Romanian history who knew how to speak to her people and identify with them.

Tighina Fortress (renamed to Bender by the Turks), located on the banks of the Dniester in Ukraine, is a 15th-century Moldavian fortress from the reign of Stephen the Great, originally built of earth and wood, to defend the ford of the Dniester River from Tatars. The earthen citadel was probably round or semi-circular, with a defensive moat, and the bunk-type dwellings were made of wood, as archaeological excavations have shown. The fortress was rebuilt by the Moldavian ruler Petru Rareș and then conquered by the Turkish Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent in 1538, becoming the residence of the Turkish Raia (an administrative unit of the Ottoman Empire), and having its name changed to Bender (meaning river port or mooring place). During this period the citadel was rebuilt in stone and enlarged, and it was completed in 1541. The forress then had a tumultuous fate, coming under the control of the Russian Empire for a period, until 1812, when it began to lose its former strategic importance.

Cristina Rus, who is a tourist guide, told us more about Tighina Fortress and its history:

“Of course, there are many sources and the information actually differs depending on the origin of the guide who talks about it. If it is a guide from the left bank of the Dniester (Transnistria), they would prefer to say that it is a fortress that was built by Suleiman the Magnificent. I personally believe that this is one of the fortresses that were built by Stephen the Great, and we can defend this with information that confirms that Stephen the Great built on the right bank of the Dniester a defensive fortresses, to defend the borders in the eastern part of Moldavia. Among them are other fortresses, such as the Hotin fortress, Soroca, Tighina, but also the White Fortress. So, of all these 4 fortresses built by Stephen the Great on the right bank of the Dniester River for defense, today controlled by the authorities of the Republic of Moldova, only the Soroca fortress was left. Returning to the history of Tighina fortress, as I said, the first order to build the fortress came from Stephen the Great, although Stephen the Great’s grandfather, Alexander the Good, is the one who first mentions the town of Tighina. Then, Stephen the Great builds the fortress and Petru Rareș strengthens it with stone. Then, already in the 16th century, Suleiman the Magnificent conquers the fortress and with each conquest and each ruler that changes, it is absolutely normal for more changes to occur. So the way we see the fortress today, it does not look exactly like it did in the time of Stephen the Great. However, the fortress is included in the route “On the footsteps of Stephen the Great and the Holy”. The fortress was built of limestone with sand mixed with eggs and animal fur. In the old days, there were no other building materials, but these materials were strong and qualitative enough so the walls of the fortress have survived to this day. Some constructions on the territory of the fortress have not survived until today, because the fortress, until recently, had only a military purpose, and only in the 21st century it opened its doors for tourists.

Also, in recent years, a park was created at the entrance to the Citadel. The fortress has defense towers and is surrounded on three sides by a moat, which was empty and never filled with water, to prevent the enemies from easily entering the citadel. On the other side was the bank of the Dniester river. Being a fortress built on the bank of the river, it was always a very convenient place for trade. In the Middle Ages, merchants would come from the Black Sea on the Dniester River, go up and gather into a market organized especially for merchants from around the world. The local guides talk about the fact that there were also churches or places of religious worship for the different peoples connected with the trade in the space of the city. They speak of an Armenian church and a Greek church there. They also say that there would have been a mosque. So far there are no ruins to prove these things, so we have to take their word for it.”

Four fortresses were built by the ruler of Moldavia Stephan the Great as defense points along the Dniester river: Soroca, Tighina, Hotin and Cetatea Albă (the White Fortress), with an exit to the Black Sea. The history of these fortresses and their territories has been a turbulent in the more recent history, after 1812. Cristina Rus gave us some details about this period:

“The White Fortress and the Hotin Fortress are both fortresses built on the right bank of the Dniester River, by order of Stephen the Great. Today, these two cities are not on the territory of the Republic of Moldova and this happened after the Second World War, when the territories were divided. To better understand, I will go back a little in history. In 1812, our historical Moldavia was divided in two, using the Prut river as its natural border. This division of territories occured both after the Russo-Turkish War and after the war between the Ottoman Empire and the Romanian Principalities, when the Romanian Principalities lost the war, they had to give something to the Ottoman Empire. In the same year, 1812, the Ottoman Empire lost the war against the Russian Empire and so the Ottoman Empire had to give something to the Russians. …So the Russian Empire started investing in Bessarabia. … The Russian Empire needed a city to turn into a regional capital, so that it would be easier for them to control all the space. Thus, they decided to choose Chisinau, which was quite a small village until that moment. … First World War. Many European countries had their borders changed … And then, during that exceptional period of revolution, the Russians failed to act quickly enough. But they understood that they had lost a piece of land in which they had invested for the last 100 years. From Bessarabia, which had just entered the composition of the Soviet Union, they took the exit to the see, where we had the White Fortress, and Northern Bucovina, where we had the Hotin fortress. … And thus we lost control over these two fortresses, which today are in Ukraine.” (MI)

There are few personalities who manage to perform at a high level in different, even opposite, fields, as was the case of the mathematician Dan Barbilian, aka the poet Ion Barbu, who is remembered for having excelled at both mathematics and literature. Dan Barbilian was gifted with a unique talent for the science of mathematics and the art of poetry, but he worked hard to put it to good use.

Dan Barbilian was born in 1895 in Câmpulung Muscel into a family of magistrates and died in 1961 in Bucharest. He had been passionate about mathematics ever since primary school, and during high school he published in the magazine “Gazeta Matematica”, a mathematics magazine where we also find the most important Romanian mathematicians. His passion for poetry also dates from around this time, but it wasn’t until 1919 that he made his literary debut, in the magazine “Sburătorul”. He first studied mathematics at the University of Bucharest and, after the end of the First World War, between 1921 and 1924, he went to Germany, to study in Göttingen, Tübingen and Berlin.

In 1929, he earned his doctoral degree in mathematics under his Bucharest teacher, the mathematician Gheorghe Țițeica, and embarked on a busy scientific career,  taking part in many international congresses. He became a professor of algebra at the Faculty of Sciences in Bucharest where he taught algebra, geometry, number theory, group theory and axiomatics. He also taught courses at universities in the German-speaking world. A metrization procedure will be named after him, known as the “Barbilian spaces”, and another of his contributions paved the way for research in the geometry of rings. He also contributed to the standardization of algebraic geometry.

Mathematician and writer Bogdan Suceava told us more about the educational opportunities enjoyed by a very talented young man like Dan Barbilian in a country that was building itself up by borrowing from the European models: “Dan Barbilian wins the Gazeta Matematica competition in 1912 and, interestingly, I even found a mention of his name in the American Mathematical Society database. You really had to be someone to be mentioned there in a chapter on mathematics. Barbilian is related to 51C05, which is something from ring geometry. He introduced the spaces now named after him in 1934, but at the beginning he worked as a math solver for the magazine. He won the magazine’s competition in 1912, and later he studied in Göttingen with David Hilbert, Emmy Noether and Edmund Landau, but also produced interesting literary work. He has very important contributions in the field of algebra and is the author of an axiomatic approach to mechanics published in 1943, which went largely unnoticed. He was, creator of mathematics of the highest order, with his formative years being linked to the Gazeta Matematica.”

At the same time, mathematician Dan Barbilian wrote poetry under the name Ion Barbu, which was a return to the family’s original name. He was in the entourage of literary critic Eugen Lovinescu and his literary circle “Sburătorul”. Another literary critic, Tudor Vianu, a friend of Barbu since high school, is the author of a volume in which he analyzes the mathematician’s poetry. Thus, according to Vianu, Barbu’s poetic work is divided into several periods: the Parnassian period inspired by French Parnassian poetry until 1925, the period of the oriental ballad after 1925, inspired by Romanian authors like Anton Pann or writings whose hero was Nastratin Hogea, and the hermetic period. The last period was named as such due to the encryption of poetic meanings that Barbu makes.

Two poems from Barbu’s poetic work are very well-known today, “Riga Crypto and Enigel the Lapp” and “After the Snails”, the latter being the title of a folk song composed by Nicu Alifantis in 1979. Reading Dan Barbilian’s notes, Bogdan Suceavă was pleasantly surprised to discover a powerful literary description of the mathematician’s memories related to important moments in his life: “About the 1912 competition, he wrote in the 1950s: ‘The problem bears the seal of Ion Banciu, a member of the algebra commission, dear, unforgettable, great professor.’ Barbilian is sentimental when he wants to be. ‘Besides my father, have I met anyone who believed in me and helped me as much? Țițeica did not have Banciu’s enthusiasm, warmth, generosity. I want to remain Banciu’s student and then Felix Klein’s and Richard Dedekind’s, nobody else’s.’ Here he is a bit unfair because Țițeica helped him a lot, but I don’t think he comforted him. He gave him deadlines and Barbilian did not like deadlines. ‘What will I have written in the thesis? Țițeica’s very good appreciation of algebra surprised me. Did I manage to come out of so many numerical calculations? If the detail of the thesis escapes me, the atmosphere of that dusty hall of the School of Bridges and that almost Nordic afternoon, with polarized light, I find again. The geometry thesis passed in the morning still feels like a lived moment today. The algebra thesis remains somewhat hypnotic.’ Let’s not forget they gave them on the same day. I wouldn’t do that today. This atmosphere, that you forget yourself and that it seems like a hypnotic atmosphere while you have a competition, this yes, we can understand. That’s how it was in 1912, that’s how it was later, that’s how it is always. This intensity of a mathematics thesis remains. What’s interesting is something else: how he describes this experience four decades later, it is something remarkable. These are problems he returns to at old age and analyzes from an advanced perspective.”

Mathematician Dan Barbilian and poet Ion Barbu showed that the boundaries between fields are not fixed and that passions can be complementary. And that the human being is both reason and sentiment.

The Romanian Revolution of 1848 was part of the revolutionary wave that swept across Europe that year and an expression of the affirmation of the Romanian nation state and national identity. Bondage was common in the Romanian Principalities, a form of servitude that has similarities, as well as differences, with serfdom and slavery. It was mainly the people of Roma ethnicity who were subject to enslavement. They were the property of the master, who treated them like any other form of property, and who was to be compensated for if deprived of his property. The Penal Code of 1818 in Wallachia stated that “All Gypsies are born slaves” and that “Gypsies without owner are the property of the state”. There is little information, however, about the origin of the enslavement of the Roma in the Romanian Principalities.

The collection of the National Museum of History of Romania in Bucharest contains documents about the freedom of Roma from enslavement. One such important document is a certificate of freedom for Matei Oprea. Curator Andreea Ștefan tells us more about its significance in the historical context of that era:

“The certificate of freedom for Matei Oprea found in the collection of the National Museum of History of Romania speaks to an episode that forms part of a longer historical process in the Romanian Principalities, namely Wallachia and Moldavia, in the 19^th century, between its 4^th and 5^th decade. I’m referring to the reforms that led to the freedom of the Roma slaves. The enslavement of the Roma population in the two principalities was the most important and the most acute social problem the two principalities had to tackle in the middle of the 19^th century.”

Andreea Ștefan tells us about the revolutionary spirit of 1848, influenced by the European politics and culture of the time, quoting the passage about emancipation from the platform adopted in June 1848 by the revolutionary movement in Wallachia, the Islaz Proclamation:

“The liberation of slaves already appears in the document through which they make their platform known, namely the Islaz Proclamation, made public on June 21. The formulation reflects the deep shame that these young intellectuals, educated in the West, the heirs of Enlightenment values, feel at the idea that such an outdated and, above all, completely inhuman social practice is being perpetuated in their country. I quote, therefore, a passage from the text of the Islaz Proclamation: ‘The Romanian people reject the inhumanity and shame of keeping slaves, and declare the freedom of the privately owned Gypsies.’”

Andreea Ștefan gives us more details about both the attitude and the approach of the revolutionaries of 1848, as well as their responsibility at that time, namely the responsibilities of the Slave Liberation Commission:

“However, we must take into account, on the one hand, the pressure that was hanging over them, and the need to appear as acceptable as possible in the eyes of the population, therefore moderate. On the other hand, we must remember that these young people educated in France all came from the social elite, a social elite which often owned land estates, who earned significant income from the exploitation of the free labor provided by slaves. Just 5 days after the Proclamation of Islaz, on June 26, the body through which this important social reform was to be implemented was created, namely the Slave Liberation Commission. It had two main tasks: to issue freedom certificates and compensation certificates.”

Andreea Ștefan gives us more details about the Certificate of Freedom for Oprea Matei found in the collection of the National Museum of History of Romania:

“It is a standard form, printed in the transitional alphabet, that is, written in a mixture of Cyrillic letters and Latin letters, and is numbered 19276. Matei Oprea was 10 years old when he received the certificate, and had been in the possession of Ion Ghica. Ion Ghica was also a participant in the Revolution of 1848, and a militant for the liberation of slaves.”

Andreea Ștefan gives us an overview of the moment of 1848 from the perspective of liberation from slavery on the territory of the Romanian Principalities:

“The 1848 moment is a step back in the process of emancipation of the Roma. The legislation voted by the provisional government is ephemeral, ceasing its validity the moment the government itself ceases its activity.”

Finally, Andreea Ștefan shares with us some opinions about the effects of those legislative norms from 1848 to the present day:

“The way in which slavery affected the Roma community is extremely complex, profound, with short-term effects, which were felt immediately after liberation, but it also had long-term effects, which we certainly felt during the very tense moment of World War II, during the Holocaust of the Roma community, and which are felt in the tendency to marginalize the Roma community, still present in the community today.”

The history of the Romanian school of mathematics begins in the late 1810s, with the establishment, in 1818, of the Polytechnic University of Bucharest under the name of  Higher Technical School. Here and in other higher education institutions established later, entire generations of Romanian engineers and mathematicians were trained. One of the names that made history in the development of mathematics in Romania is Gheorghe Țițeica.

He was born in 1873, in Turnu Severin, a city on the Romanian bank of the Danube Gorge, and passed away in Bucharest in 1939, at the age of 66. From an early age, he showed a great interest in mathematics and the so-called “hard sciences”, that is, the formal sciences and the natural sciences that are based on methodological rigor, accuracy and objectivity. He was the first to be admitted to the Bucharest Normal School, the future PolytechnicUniversity, and studied mathematics at the Faculty of Sciences in Bucharest. Among the professors at the University of Bucharest, he was closest to mathematician and astronomer Spiru Haret, the most important reformer of the Romanian education system.

In 1895 he graduated in mathematics and the following year he went to study in Paris. He specialized in differential geometry. Țițeica wrote about networks in a space with “n” dimensions and introduced new classes of surfaces, curves and networks. He issued the “five-lei piece problem” or “Țițeica’s theorem”, and the concepts of “Țițeica surface” and “Țițeica curve”. He also dedicated himself to popularizing science and raising the level of mathematical education in Romania. One of his great passions was the “Gazeta Matematica” magazine and he was among the founders of the publication “Mathematics”.

Bogdan Suceavă is a mathematician and writer and an expert in the history of mathematics in Romania. He defines Țițeica’s study period in the West as decisive for his career and and the development of scientific education in Romania: “The first decades of “Gazeta Matematica” are linked to Gheorghe Țițeica’s name. He benefited from scholarships all his life. He grew up without a father. He graduated from the school in Bucharest and in 1896, and, when he arrived in Paris, the first thing he was recommended to do was study at the Ecole Préparatoire. On that first year, he met Henri Lebesgue, who six years later would become the author of a very important chapter in mathematical analysis. Țițeica, being of the human quality we know, followed two sets of courses, those at the École Préparatoire and those at the École Normale. The first year was hell. He coped at the highest level and the question is why was he recommended to take more courses? Between Bucharest and Paris there was a certain difference. In July 1897, he quickly passed the certification exams in differential and integral calculus, mechanics and astronomy, all in a single year. He was first in an extraordinary generation, occasion on which he received a scholarship, plus a fee exemption. This experience would be important at a formative level. He understood very quickly how things were, how he had to prepare, what level the French school was at and where the Romanian school was at, during that time. This was happening before 1900.”

Romania was moving at full speed towards the West and Romanian mathematics was one of the sciences in great expansion. And Țițeica’s generation sought to reduce the huge differences between Western society, the French one being the great model, and the Romanian one. As Bogdan Suceavă also noted, Țițeica met top mathematicians in France and learned from them everything that he brought to Romania: “Who did Gheorghe Țițeica work with? He worked with Gaston Darboux, who at that time was not only dean of the Faculty of Mathematics at the Sorbonne, he was also the author of a four-volume treatise on differential geometry in which the unifying theme is the following: how to choose the most appropriate benchmarks for various problems of differential geometry? The subject he studied was a whole philosophy, he was a very influential author who had many talented students, Țițeica being one of the best. He also studied with Henri Poincaré, Edouard Goursat, Charles Hermite, Émile Picard, Jules Tannery, Paul Émile Appell, the best mathematicians. After which, in 1899, he returned to Bucharest. He would write until 1937, over 100 works. In the last two years he did not work at all. He started collaborating with “Gazeta Matematica” while he was in Paris. The mathematics competition with the same name owes a lot to him. The editorials he wrote during that period described everything, including how the candidates behaved in the oral exams. It’s the kind of comments that no one would publish today, but which Țițeica, did.”

Gheorghe Țițeica could not have become anything other than a university professor, a member of some academies and an honorary doctor of some universities. He was also among the ranks of the Romanian Society of Mathematical Sciences, whose president he was.