ROMANIA

ROMANIA / ROMÂNIA.

Definitive stamps.
Map of Romania with telephone network.
Fifteenth stamp in a set of 18, issued on 20.12.1967.
Face value: 3 Romanian lei.
Design: J. Drugă.
Printing: Photogravure.
Size: 28 x 33 mm.

Catalogues
- Michel No. 2653.
- Romfilatelia No. 662o.
- Scott No. 1984.
- StampWorld No. 2640.
- Stanley Gibbons No. 3525.
- Yvert et Tellier No. 2366.

Origins of the telephone system in Romania. Telephone arrived in the present Romanian territory at Temesvár (now Timișoara, in Hungarian Transylvania) in 1881, while Bucharest, which acquired a telephone exchange for government use in 1889 (made available to the public the following year), became part of an inter-urban system linked with Brăila and Galaţi in 1890 (with public use following in 1893). Meanwhile in 1890 railway engineers A. Cottescu and M. H. Romniceanu installed a central control system (‘aparat cu telecomandă centralizată’) at Buftea. Bucharest to Ploiești and Sinaia was another early inter-urban telephone link before the rail-based system was extended nationally and internationally to reach Budapest via both the present Brașov-Cluj-Oradea and Craiova-Orșova-Szeged, as well as Vienna via Burdujeni (Suceava). The service was a state monopoly, projected from a great headquarters building in Bucharest in 1899. After the First World War, the achievement of national unity created a greatly enlarged system which in 1926 comprised some 18,400 km of telegraph / telephone lines. In 1965 was created a ministry dedicated to post and telecommunications.