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The Age of Invention 1849-1920


The second exhibition gallery depicts Denmark in the process of shrinking in size, but with the State’s grip on communications growing. New inventions came along: The stamp was introduced in 1851 and the electric telegraph in 1854. The first private telephone company was established in 1881, and in 1897 the State asserted its telephone monopoly. At the end of the 19th century Valdemar Poulsen’s inventions served as the basis for magnetic sound recording and early broadcasting.


The "Old Post Office" forms the backdrop for a presentation of how the postal service developed from the mid 19th century until World War One.

After the adaptation of the Constitution in 1849 the postal service began to expand. Civil servants assumed responsibility for a wide range of jobs previously assigned to private individuals. A black colleague, the rural postman, joined the red urban postman. The postal service began to build its own post offices and buy large numbers of vehicles.

The great school reforms of 1814 made a major impact: Most Danes were now literate and willing to move to find work. The small, inexpensive stamp based on the British model was introduced in 1851, sparking off nothing short of a revolution in the history of communications. It meant an explosion in the number of letters – as well as a new invention: the letter box.

The oldest Danish stamps and the stamp-printing technology of those days are represented in the exhibition, as well as examples of old letters, letter boxes etc. Behind the Old Post Office is a whole room dedicated to temporary exhibitions of items from the national stamp collection.

Opposite the history of the reform of the postal service we have placed a similar exhibition about telegraphy. The first section deals with the optical telegraph used in Denmark between 1802 and 1865, but the greater part is about the electric telegraph. The interior here is a replica of Fredericia Telegraph Station about 1910: Northern Europe’s international telegraphy centre. The State and the Great Northern Telegraph Company created this unique position around a technology considerably serviced by women.

On display are also the most outstanding of the State Telegraph Service’s substantial collection of instruments and objects which trace the history of electromagnetic telegraphy in Denmark: The Morse apparatus from the first telegraph office in 1854, material from the first telegraph line the "Sound Line" between Elsinore and Hamburg, the first batteries, telegraph wires, and cables. The story of the first director of telegraphy, songwriter and engineer Peter Faber, and the first female telegraph operator, author Mathilde Fibiger, are, of course, also included. And you can even practise your Morse skills as much as you want.

Twenty years after the invention of the telephone in 1876 there were 57 Danish telephone companies. The rural exchange from Hjallese on Funen is an example of how popular the telephone quickly became even in small countryside homes. Then the State asserted its monopoly and in a matter of years only four big companies remained: KTAS, FKT, JTAS, and the State Telephone Service. Hundreds of well-mannered, single women with long arms served one of the most talkative nations in the world. In the exhibition you can try your hand as a telephone operator at an old switchboard. And there is a wealth of old telephones, pictures, stories, and objects from the era when telephone wires were installed all over Denmark to connect subscribers.

The wizard’s workshop, "Esbjerg House", has been revived to draw attention to the museum’s unique collection of instruments created by the Danish inventor Valdemar Poulsen and his colleague P.O. Pedersen. Their work resulted in the world’s first answering machine, the telegraphone, wireless communication, the arc transmitter, and the birth of Danish broadcasting. It is a very technical history, but in the exhibition it is illustrated by examples of the advantages the population reaped from the inventions. From radio crystal sets for the amateurs to Christian the 10th’s magnificent radio receiver, enhanced by examples of old recordings from the era when Lyngby Radio served as sound studio for the State Broadcasting Service.

An old iceboat is the "eye of the storm" in the middle of this gallery. Around it we depict the history of the maritime postal service: the struggle to conquer Denmark’s many "wet highways". Before the powerful, motor-driven icebreakers really got to grips with winter ice, iceboats were the only way to transport post, packages, and passengers over Denmark’s sounds and straits. You could stop off on the island of Sprogø on your way over the great belt.

The transport history continues in the long glass corridor connecting the second exhibition room with the third. In the corridor, children’s favourite, the electrical model train set drives through Denmark.


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