Bye-bye telegram
The Hindu
On July 14, 2013, India shut its state-run telegram service, bringing an end to a transformative technology that had served the country well for 163 years! A.S.Ganesh tells you how this technology came to be and how it ran its course in our country…
Do you know what a telegram is? In all likelihood, you are probably thinking about the instant messaging service Telegram Messenger, which is more commonly known just as Telegram. Ironically, the founders of this service chose the name to emphasise on its primary function – instant messaging.
This is because telegrams, a traditional method of sending messages, were used for quick communication in the past. The messages were sent by electricity or radio, before they were printed and delivered to the recipient’s home or office.
The idea of telegraphy, or the long-distance transmission of information using coded signals, have been around for centuries. The term telegraph, however, most commonly refers to the electric telegraph that was developed in the mid-19th Century and dominated the communication landscape for more than a century. The person behind this is American inventor and painter Samuel F. B. Morse.
Morse is said to have struck upon the idea of using electricity to communicate over distances during a conversation in 1832 when he was returning from Europe aboard a ship. He wondered if it was possible to send coded messages over a wire, but realised pretty quickly that his limited understanding about the nature of electricity wouldn’t suffice when it came to developing his idea.
Morse sought the help of a colleague at the University of the City of New York, Leonard D. Gale. A professor of chemistry, Gale was well-versed with the subject of electricity and had the know-how of the electrical work done by Princeton’s Joseph Henry, a pioneer in the field. Once Morse brought in Alfred Vail, a young technician, all the ingredients for success were in place.
Even though Morse was ready with his telegraph system in 1837 and had begun demonstrations, he had to wait for a considerable amount of time. This was because the economic disaster known as the Panic of 1837 took place at about the same time and funds weren’t forthcoming for this project.
It was only in 1843 that the $30,000 that would enable him to build a telegraph line from Washington to Baltimore was granted. On May 24, 1844, Morse sent the first official Morse code message transmitted in the U.S. from the U.S. Capitol to his partner Vail in Baltimore. The first message – What hath God wrought – has now gone down in history as a famous message.