Death (and rebirth) of the telegram
August 2, 2006 6:28 PM   Subscribe

It’s unfortunate that telegraphy is no longer with us. The telegram, however, lives on in one of the media that sealed its fate. And if you prefer to roll your own, there’s a site for that too (link to fonts at "telegram" at lower right).
posted by jason's_planet (18 comments total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
comment of the summer
posted by caddis at 6:58 PM on August 2, 2006


good show!
posted by TwelveTwo at 7:05 PM on August 2, 2006


It’s unfortunate that telegraphy is no longer with us.

Oh really? What's the difference between 'dots & dashes' and '0s & 1s'?

What will we remember of the telegram? Probably the prose style the economic of telegraphy engendered.

txt me whn u rch y2k
posted by mischief at 7:26 PM on August 2, 2006


It is all about the inconvenience.
posted by TwelveTwo at 7:36 PM on August 2, 2006


Oh tomatos, I meant to link to this.
posted by TwelveTwo at 7:37 PM on August 2, 2006


It’s unfortunate that telegraphy is no longer with us.

Along the lines of what mischief said:

If you think of telegraphy as "Sending signals along a wire using Morse code", then, yeah, it's been dead for a while.

On another understanding, it hasn't so much vanished, as simply improved and improved to the point of being nearly unrecognizable.

Bell's patent for the telephone describes the invention as consisting of "new an useful improvements in telegraphy."

From that viewpoint, the phone, cable TV, the internet - these are all just improvements to the orginal idea of telegraphy - that you can send signals along a wire.
posted by ManInSuit at 7:39 PM on August 2, 2006


Yeah, but can you still get someone (other than a florist) to deliver a personal message to someone's door for you. Will a florist just take the fifty bucks and deliver the card and keep the flowers?
posted by caddis at 7:43 PM on August 2, 2006


Lest our current tech heads get too big, read Tom Standage's excellent book, The Victorian Internet.

And the next time you dread pulling network cable, consider what the installers of the first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable had to endure (more historical details here and at PBS.)
posted by cenoxo at 7:49 PM on August 2, 2006


deliver a personal message to someone's door

My pal Lefty, the one carrying the bat.

That last mile is always a bitch. ;-P
posted by mischief at 8:07 PM on August 2, 2006


.-- .... .- - / .... .- - .... / --. --- -.. / .-- .-. --- ..- --. .... - / ..--..
posted by ZenMasterThis at 8:13 PM on August 2, 2006


comment of the summer

Fuck yeah! I loved that one! Thanks, Fandango_Matt!

*applauds*

Maninsuit, mischief: your points are very well taken. From the standpoint of technological advancement and progress: yes, I agree with you. The telephone, the 'net, etc. are all improvements on and refinements of the telegraph. On an aesthetic level, though, I'm not so sure. When you consider the actual differences in the experience of using these media, I think that something's definitely been lost. An analogy that comes to mind is that of silent film. I grew up on a media diet of color film, sound, special effects, etc. and I'm not about to turn my back on that. At the same time, silent film had its own quirks, its own charm: the exaggerated acting style, the flickering, herky-jerky cinematography, the narrative panels cut into the action ("AND NOW OUR HERO SAVES THE DAY"), to say nothing of the live orchestra playing during the film.

This cinematic experience is gone forever. (There was a silent movie theater in LA for a while but I don't think it's going to survive.) Outside of the occasional revival by determined groups of artists, you will not have the experience of an old-timey silent film.

The old-timey telegram had its own charms as well. And those, too, are gone forever. I don't doubt that its descendants are better media, more efficient, more powerful overall. But I still miss the charms of the old-time telegram.

TwelveTwo: I liked your cartoon "The aesthetics of inconvenience." Seemed like a nice idea for a post of its own.
posted by jason's_planet at 8:20 PM on August 2, 2006


Oh really? What's the difference between 'dots & dashes' and '0s & 1s'?

Technically, there's a big difference between Morse Code and modern digital systems. Whether a signal is a dot or dash is determined by the length of the signal. (The technical term for this is PWM, pulse width modulation.) You could build a digital communications system based on this principle, but as far as I know it's not used in any real communications systems. (It is used in other contexts.)

Doing some reading, something more similar to modern systems was invented in 1874, the Baudot code, which looks like it would be appropriate to consider as similar to the "legacy" serial port.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 8:49 PM on August 2, 2006


props to fandango_matt

I dunno if this is due the "best comment of 2006" award on the first post on this thread, but hey, it's definitely in nomination.
posted by paulsc at 10:59 PM on August 2, 2006


jason's_planet posted "It’s unfortunate that telegraphy is no longer with us. "

More precisely, Western Union is no longer with us. Telegrams (for some completely inexplicable reason) are still alive and kicking in Japan, where they are traditionally used to send congratulatory messages, such as to weddings that someone is unable to attend (I think there was even a congratulatory telegraph read out at my wedding. I was a bit nervous that day, though, so my memory is foggy).
posted by Bugbread at 2:05 AM on August 3, 2006


"The old-timey telegram had its own charms as well."

Evidence that the marketers at Western Union had more than a few consumers by the nuts.
posted by mischief at 6:42 AM on August 3, 2006


mischief: Well the actual text transmitted by telegram coders is likely to be a bit different from the text transmitted by instant messaging. People who use Morse have their own vocabulary that in many ways is very similar to instant messaging.

In addition, the "telegraphic style" used in movies was not used by commercial users of the telegraph, who developed their own codebooks to minimize cost and hinder competitors.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 9:00 AM on August 3, 2006


The Porthcuno Telegraph Museum has some nice online exhibits of electro-mechanical telegraphic hardware, including the Raymond-Barker Multi-Tone Transmitter, Mirror Galvanometer, and the wonderfully named Dearlove & Brown Perforator.
posted by cenoxo at 9:53 AM on August 3, 2006


the actual text transmitted by telegram coders is likely to be a bit different

Duh!
posted by mischief at 1:14 PM on August 3, 2006


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