Iegar, Diana - Sárándi Tamás: Satu Mare. Amprentele trecutului (Satu Mare, 2009)

Introducere

Preface

With the spread of literacy on all social levels, the writing became as plausible mean of communication as the verbal contacts.The spread of postcards in the 19th century, gave considerable impetus to the written correspondence, which was gradually released from social and stylistic constraints and turned into a familiar gesture, linked to everyday life. Adding images to letters made the senders'messages more expressive. With such advantages, the postcard became soon one of the favourite means of communication among the people of different social strata.

The first postcard was printed in Vienna on the 1st of October 1869. Spreading all over Europe and the American continent, it overcame the prejudices concerning the confidentiality of the correspondence soon. Few years following the print of the first postcards, the aspect - the possibility of adding images, and the way of filling it - was standardized by international rules. Thus, its size had to be of 9x14 cm, the sender's message had to be written on the front and the address of the recipient on the back. Adding images led to the diversification of the postcards, their aspect depending on the increasing inventiveness of the typographers. Paintings, drawings, stylized pictures, symbols and photos were used as illustrations on these small pieces of cards. Images of cities with everything they implied - streets, buildings of local interest, landscapes, life-scenes presenting the urban world - soon became a separate category of picture postcards, having double advantage: they were messages from the native places or familiar lands, and they were accessible and expressive souvenirs for passengers, too.

Due to the increasing demands, several local companies started to publish picture postcards with images of Satu Mare, in the late 19th century. In a way never met before, the photos popularized all those

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