5 ms·

Historically, telegrams are billed per character, nowadays they are probably just transmitted over internet anyways, the only difference is the time it has to b

Historically, telegrams are billed per character, nowadays they are probably just transmitted over internet anyways, the only difference is the time it has to be delivered. I know of Russian system they still have it, only difference from a letter is that regular telegram will be delivered in 8-12 hours and urgent in 4 hours. Currently with everyone having a mobile phone there is a lot less demand, sending an sms will be faster anyways.

lb1lf 9y ago
Hi, Thanks - that makes a lot of sense. (Maybe the operator at the sending end had problems deciphering the handwriting on the form? Or were you instructed to write in block letters, perhaps even with a single character in each box, to ensure maximum readability? Presumably there was a standard form used by all members of the ITU or something? Call it a common interface, if you like?) I've always assumed that the slightly garbled text was an attempt at shaving a little off the fee; I almost feel a little sad to hear that may not have been the case at all. :)
- pm215 9y ago
  Image of form for sending a UK telegram: http://www.images.stamp-collectors-network.net/large_images/M47626.jpg http://www.images.stamp-collectors-network.net/large_images/... -- no boxes. Running words together will only work in a foreign language, the clerk would notice if you tried it in English and charge you for the number of words actually used.
- mseebach 9y ago
  Was the message sent in norwegian from the US? In that case, depending on the actual infrastructure it had to travel through, it would have been transcribed at least once, probably more than once, by operators that did not know norwegian, and thus had no intuition for where the spaces went.
  - lb1lf 9y ago
    Yup - it was sent in Norwegian from the US. However, it was sent as late as 1993, so I would assume (without having any expertise on that kind of thing!) that 'sending a telegram' simply meant that upon you filling in the required forms, someone typed the text on a terminal or even in an application on a general-purpose computer before the text magically appeared in Norway, to be printed and hand-carried to your home, a very cumbersome solution to the last mile problem. :) (Now I am curious; I'll be off to Google later tonight - just when did the telegram service stop relying on actual telegraphy?)
    - mseebach 9y ago
      The backing technology would probably have been telex. This seems to have superseded morse-telegraphs some time in the 1960s, and the US telegram office (Western Union), if they had a connection, should have been able to telex directly to your local Norwegian post office. Completely wild and unqualified guess: Western Union probably did not run their US operations over telex in 1993, they probably had some 80s-era green-screen mainframe system, which did not connect to the world wide telex network (because telegrams, especially international ones, were a microscopic part of traffic -- anyone with any kind of significant international traffic would have their own telex-links, or be on the phone, fax and/or email by then). So the operator would have typed the message (from a hand-written form, the customer would probably not have had hands-on-keyboard) into this system (first transcription), addressed to some central office in charge of sending world wide telegrams. The office would have telex, but not integrated, so they'd print out the message and re-type it on the telex (second transcription), sent directly to your local post office. There, they would take the message directly from the telex and deliver it to you (so no transcription on the Norwegian end, at which point the spacing would have been fixed).
      - ghaff 9y ago
        In the early 1980s, the oil drilling company I worked for still used Telex extensively to communicate with our various offices around the world. The procedure was that you'd fill out a form by hand and stick it in inter-office mail for delivery to our communications center in the building. In about a day, you'd get back the teletype response.
pm215 9y ago
In the UK they were billed by the word : http://www.1900s.org.uk/images-1930s40s-postal-rates.htm http://www.1900s.org.uk/images-1930s40s-postal-rates.htm has a scan of a 1930s/40s tariff which is 6p for 9 words, extra 1p for every word beyond that, and extra 6p per mile you were outside a 3 mile radius of the destination post office.
- walshemj 9y ago
  A few years ago when I worked for BT I met a retired guy who had started as a telegram boy at age 14 - apparently every morning they had to line up for inspection.

lb1lf 9y ago

Hi, Thanks - that makes a lot of sense. (Maybe the operator at the sending end had problems deciphering the handwriting on the form? Or were you instructed to write in block letters, perhaps even with a single character in each box, to ensure maximum readability? Presumably there was a standard form used by all members of the ITU or something? Call it a common interface, if you like?) I've always assumed that the slightly garbled text was an attempt at shaving a little off the fee; I almost feel a little sad to hear that may not have been the case at all. :)

pm215 9y ago
Image of form for sending a UK telegram: http://www.images.stamp-collectors-network.net/large_images/M47626.jpg http://www.images.stamp-collectors-network.net/large_images/... -- no boxes. Running words together will only work in a foreign language, the clerk would notice if you tried it in English and charge you for the number of words actually used.
mseebach 9y ago
Was the message sent in norwegian from the US? In that case, depending on the actual infrastructure it had to travel through, it would have been transcribed at least once, probably more than once, by operators that did not know norwegian, and thus had no intuition for where the spaces went.
- lb1lf 9y ago
  Yup - it was sent in Norwegian from the US. However, it was sent as late as 1993, so I would assume (without having any expertise on that kind of thing!) that 'sending a telegram' simply meant that upon you filling in the required forms, someone typed the text on a terminal or even in an application on a general-purpose computer before the text magically appeared in Norway, to be printed and hand-carried to your home, a very cumbersome solution to the last mile problem. :) (Now I am curious; I'll be off to Google later tonight - just when did the telegram service stop relying on actual telegraphy?)
  - mseebach 9y ago
    The backing technology would probably have been telex. This seems to have superseded morse-telegraphs some time in the 1960s, and the US telegram office (Western Union), if they had a connection, should have been able to telex directly to your local Norwegian post office. Completely wild and unqualified guess: Western Union probably did not run their US operations over telex in 1993, they probably had some 80s-era green-screen mainframe system, which did not connect to the world wide telex network (because telegrams, especially international ones, were a microscopic part of traffic -- anyone with any kind of significant international traffic would have their own telex-links, or be on the phone, fax and/or email by then). So the operator would have typed the message (from a hand-written form, the customer would probably not have had hands-on-keyboard) into this system (first transcription), addressed to some central office in charge of sending world wide telegrams. The office would have telex, but not integrated, so they'd print out the message and re-type it on the telex (second transcription), sent directly to your local post office. There, they would take the message directly from the telex and deliver it to you (so no transcription on the Norwegian end, at which point the spacing would have been fixed).
    - ghaff 9y ago
      In the early 1980s, the oil drilling company I worked for still used Telex extensively to communicate with our various offices around the world. The procedure was that you'd fill out a form by hand and stick it in inter-office mail for delivery to our communications center in the building. In about a day, you'd get back the teletype response.

pm215 9y ago

In the UK they were billed by the word : http://www.1900s.org.uk/images-1930s40s-postal-rates.htm http://www.1900s.org.uk/images-1930s40s-postal-rates.htm has a scan of a 1930s/40s tariff which is 6p for 9 words, extra 1p for every word beyond that, and extra 6p per mile you were outside a 3 mile radius of the destination post office.

walshemj 9y ago
A few years ago when I worked for BT I met a retired guy who had started as a telegram boy at age 14 - apparently every morning they had to line up for inspection.