5 ms·

Technology You Didn't Know Still Existed: The Telegram

32 points by adrianhoward 11y ago

mgkimsal 11y ago
I lamented on Facebook that I regretted never receiving a telegram in my life. Having grown up watching people in movies and TV getting telegrams, by the time I hit adulthood, the age of telegrams was largely gone. A few weeks later, I received a telegram - a friend on Facebook found a service that still does telegrams, and I got it. I think it was rather expensive, but the gesture was still appreciated :)
- ghaff 11y ago
  I've never received or sent a telegram. However, in my first full-time job in the early 80s, telex was our primary communications mechanism between our global operations offices (offshore drilling). You (typically) hand-wrote a transmission sheet and sent it up to the communications center which sent it out.
- ahazred8ta 11y ago
  You can print your own fake telegram as a gift. This is an editable PDF of a classic 1930s Western Union telegraph form. http://www.cthulhulives.org/toybox/propdocs/PropTelegram3.html http://www.cthulhulives.org/toybox/propdocs/PropTelegram3.ht... -also- http://www.cthulhulives.org/toybox/propdocs/PropTelegram1.html http://www.cthulhulives.org/toybox/propdocs/PropTelegram1.ht...
- noyesno 11y ago
  While not the same thing, you may enjoy testing the NTS (National Traffic System)[0][1] for sending ARRL Radiograms[3]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Traffic_System [1] http://www.arrl.org/nts-manual [3] http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Public%20Service/RADIOGRAM-2011.pdf
lordnacho 11y ago
I remember my dad taking me to send a telegram when I was a kid in the 1980s. He told me it was paid by the word, so since he was writing in Vietnamese he'd just join them up and nobody would know any better. Can this be true?
- kryptiskt 11y ago
  People used to use telegraph ciphers that abbreviated common phrases with unusual words to pay less. The real words was a feature as the telegraph company was suspicious about balderdash, and there was no reason to optimize for character count as it was paid per word (or rather a fixed fee + word fee so it never got cheap). An example: http://archive.org/stream/unicodeuniversa00unkngoog#page/n3/mode/2up http://archive.org/stream/unicodeuniversa00unkngoog#page/n3/... where "Acceptance paid into bank, cannot be withdrawn" becomes abjectio in an early example. More tragic (under Births): "Confined yesterday, Twins, one alive, a girl, Mother not expected to to live" becomes annexus.
  - lbhnact 11y ago
    Poignant example. Life use to be much, much less easy. Excellent link as well, thanks.
  - daxelrod 11y ago
    It's called Unicode! That's fantastic.
dsr_ 11y ago
Oh! That's what caused 60 Hudson St to be, err, 60 Hudson. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_Hudson_Street https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_Hudson_Street A ridiculously high percentage of the Internet flows through that building, which was once Western Union's HQ.
schiffern 11y ago
The part about Oscar Wilde reminds me of another story of attribution, relayed by Dr Jerry Pournelle: http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2view/view246.html http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2view/view24... > Someone recently asked about the origin of the description of DC/X as "landing on a tail of fire the way God and Robert Heinlein intended rockets should land." > Although I've used that often, it's a case similar to the time when someone at dinner said something clever, Oscar Wilde said "I wish I'd said that," and someone else said "Don't worry, Oscar, by tomorrow you will have." The origin is Dr. Arlan Andrews... I would assume Oscar Wilde never said that either. :)
denzil_correa 11y ago
India officially shut its Telegram service 2 years ago [0]. I was nostalgic and used the last day to send a few telegrams to my family and dear ones [1,2]. [0] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/10180463/India-sends-its-last-telegram.-Stop.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/1018046... [1] http://i.imgur.com/7GDi8oN.jpg http://i.imgur.com/7GDi8oN.jpg [2] http://i.imgur.com/OmAhXoB.jpg http://i.imgur.com/OmAhXoB.jpg
tomjen3 11y ago
If you can find somebody to deliver a telegram, chances are that you can get in contact with just about anybody other than the president by sending them a telegram. Think about it - if you receive a telegram would you throw it away or read it?
Animats 11y ago
The present Western Union Money Transfer is not really a descendant of the the Western Union Telegraph Company. It's more of a successor of First Data, the payment systems company. Through a confusing series of mergers and selloffs in the 1980s, involving about five companies, the money transfer business ended up with the Western Union name. The telegram business was incredibly low-volume by modern standards. In the 1970s, I visited Western Union's international message gateway in Mawah, NJ. Most Atlantic international message traffic passed through a pair of UNIVAC computers. One woman at a CRT terminal handled all mail bounces for transatlantic traffic. About once a minute, she had a message to deal with. The computers were not heavily loaded. The tape drive logging traffic for NSA wrote a block every few seconds.
- joezydeco 11y ago
  Post-Telegram, Western Union also had a business into the 1980s with the Mailgram. Mailgrams used satellite transmission to send messages to local centers, where it would be printed out and sent via US Mail. Let's also not forget FedEx's failed ZapMail system, which was faxed documents delivered locally by Federal Express trucks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapmail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapmail
peter303 11y ago
Towards the end telegrams in the USA were for classy messages. I got an admission acceptance to Stanford grad school via telegram. A couple of job offers too. Ironically the deliver was usually the post office.
SN76477 11y ago
` Gosh, I hope hipsters do not discover this.

32 points by adrianhoward 11y ago

I lamented on Facebook that I regretted never receiving a telegram in my life. Having grown up watching people in movies and TV getting telegrams, by the time I hit adulthood, the age of telegrams was largely gone. A few weeks later, I received a telegram - a friend on Facebook found a service that still does telegrams, and I got it. I think it was rather expensive, but the gesture was still appreciated :)

ghaff 11y ago
I've never received or sent a telegram. However, in my first full-time job in the early 80s, telex was our primary communications mechanism between our global operations offices (offshore drilling). You (typically) hand-wrote a transmission sheet and sent it up to the communications center which sent it out.
ahazred8ta 11y ago
You can print your own fake telegram as a gift. This is an editable PDF of a classic 1930s Western Union telegraph form. http://www.cthulhulives.org/toybox/propdocs/PropTelegram3.html http://www.cthulhulives.org/toybox/propdocs/PropTelegram3.ht... -also- http://www.cthulhulives.org/toybox/propdocs/PropTelegram1.html http://www.cthulhulives.org/toybox/propdocs/PropTelegram1.ht...
noyesno 11y ago
While not the same thing, you may enjoy testing the NTS (National Traffic System)[0][1] for sending ARRL Radiograms[3]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Traffic_System [1] http://www.arrl.org/nts-manual [3] http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Public%20Service/RADIOGRAM-2011.pdf

lordnacho 11y ago

I remember my dad taking me to send a telegram when I was a kid in the 1980s. He told me it was paid by the word, so since he was writing in Vietnamese he'd just join them up and nobody would know any better. Can this be true?

kryptiskt 11y ago
People used to use telegraph ciphers that abbreviated common phrases with unusual words to pay less. The real words was a feature as the telegraph company was suspicious about balderdash, and there was no reason to optimize for character count as it was paid per word (or rather a fixed fee + word fee so it never got cheap). An example: http://archive.org/stream/unicodeuniversa00unkngoog#page/n3/mode/2up http://archive.org/stream/unicodeuniversa00unkngoog#page/n3/... where "Acceptance paid into bank, cannot be withdrawn" becomes abjectio in an early example. More tragic (under Births): "Confined yesterday, Twins, one alive, a girl, Mother not expected to to live" becomes annexus.
- lbhnact 11y ago
  Poignant example. Life use to be much, much less easy. Excellent link as well, thanks.
- daxelrod 11y ago
  It's called Unicode! That's fantastic.

dsr_ 11y ago

Oh! That's what caused 60 Hudson St to be, err, 60 Hudson. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_Hudson_Street https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_Hudson_Street A ridiculously high percentage of the Internet flows through that building, which was once Western Union's HQ.

schiffern 11y ago

The part about Oscar Wilde reminds me of another story of attribution, relayed by Dr Jerry Pournelle: http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2view/view246.html http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2view/view24... > Someone recently asked about the origin of the description of DC/X as "landing on a tail of fire the way God and Robert Heinlein intended rockets should land." > Although I've used that often, it's a case similar to the time when someone at dinner said something clever, Oscar Wilde said "I wish I'd said that," and someone else said "Don't worry, Oscar, by tomorrow you will have." The origin is Dr. Arlan Andrews... I would assume Oscar Wilde never said that either. :)

denzil_correa 11y ago

India officially shut its Telegram service 2 years ago [0]. I was nostalgic and used the last day to send a few telegrams to my family and dear ones [1,2]. [0] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/10180463/India-sends-its-last-telegram.-Stop.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/1018046... [1] http://i.imgur.com/7GDi8oN.jpg http://i.imgur.com/7GDi8oN.jpg [2] http://i.imgur.com/OmAhXoB.jpg http://i.imgur.com/OmAhXoB.jpg

tomjen3 11y ago

If you can find somebody to deliver a telegram, chances are that you can get in contact with just about anybody other than the president by sending them a telegram. Think about it - if you receive a telegram would you throw it away or read it?

Animats 11y ago

The present Western Union Money Transfer is not really a descendant of the the Western Union Telegraph Company. It's more of a successor of First Data, the payment systems company. Through a confusing series of mergers and selloffs in the 1980s, involving about five companies, the money transfer business ended up with the Western Union name. The telegram business was incredibly low-volume by modern standards. In the 1970s, I visited Western Union's international message gateway in Mawah, NJ. Most Atlantic international message traffic passed through a pair of UNIVAC computers. One woman at a CRT terminal handled all mail bounces for transatlantic traffic. About once a minute, she had a message to deal with. The computers were not heavily loaded. The tape drive logging traffic for NSA wrote a block every few seconds.

joezydeco 11y ago
Post-Telegram, Western Union also had a business into the 1980s with the Mailgram. Mailgrams used satellite transmission to send messages to local centers, where it would be printed out and sent via US Mail. Let's also not forget FedEx's failed ZapMail system, which was faxed documents delivered locally by Federal Express trucks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapmail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapmail

peter303 11y ago

Towards the end telegrams in the USA were for classy messages. I got an admission acceptance to Stanford grad school via telegram. A couple of job offers too. Ironically the deliver was usually the post office.

SN76477 11y ago

` Gosh, I hope hipsters do not discover this.