Brussels - Passage 44 - Nov 1998_ Jan 1999
In 1998 this was my largest exhibition to date, covering 600 m²!
It was sponsored by one of the big Belgian bank organisations, “Gemeentekrediet /Crédit Communal”. At the same time they also sponsored my first book, “Telegrafie, een verhaal in rechte lijn” in Dutch, my mother tongue (and that of all Flemish people in Belgium) together with an edition in French: “Télégraphie, une histoire branchée”. In 2009 this book was translated into English as Classics of Communication.
The main theme of this expo was telegraphy, but in the 1990s I was also collecting items of scientific apparatus (mainly from the early years of electricity), old telephones and old radios. So some of those were also included in the display. This can also be seen in the above-mentioned book, which also acted as a kind of a catalogue of the exhibition. Unfortunately, all three versions of the book are long since out of print.
In order to make this exhibition even more impressive I asked some people and institutions to lend some unique telegraphs. I collaborated with, amongst others, CNAM (Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in Paris), RUG (the Science Museum of the Belgian university of Ghent), RUCA (Antwerp University) and BELGACOM (the Belgian PTT). Together they provided around 15% of all the items that were on display.
Here are just a very limited number of images in order to give an impression. I had to scan the original photographs, which were taken with a film camera, so they are not of the best quality.
