Telegram

History

Telegrams are transmitted, as a rule, on wires or on radio through telegraph. The first electric telegraphs appeared in Europe at the end of XVIII — the beginning of the 19th century. The Russian scientist Pavel Shilling in 1832 created the first electromagnetic telegraph with the original code which public demonstration took place on October 21 the same year. The USA first telegram was sent from Baltimore to Washington on May 24, 1844 by the American inventor of telegraph Samuel Morse.

Early telegraphs printed the accepted text on the paper strip with the sticky back which then was pasted on the sheet of paper for convenience of reading.

USSR: filled form. 1944

To the middle of the 1980th years there were teletypes in which the text of the telegram was printed directly on paper. Many post offices for the mezzanine board gave an opportunity of sending congratulatory telegrams, in this case the film or the sheet with the accepted text were pasted on artly issued form.

It was once accepted to send telegrams on the occasion of important events, and in love cases — telegrams of romantic contents. With development of modern types of communication, the romanticism connected with obtaining telegrams left.

Now the telegram lost the relevance in view of emergence of a set of more convenient alternative means of communication. On January 27, 2006 the American company Western Union transferring text messages on telegraph during one and a half hundred years stopped rendering this service.

The Russian Post still renders services of transfer of telegrams.

The telegram can be sent also on the Internet.

Interesting Facts

• In 1930 the Associated Press agency made useful experience on transfer of telegrams. The telegram sent from New York ran all over around the globe twice in 2 hours 5 minutes. At the same time transmission rate considerably changed: for example, from Moscow to Beijing this telegram went 4 minutes, and from Paris to Geneva — 13 minutes.

• In "Guinness Book of Records" the most expensive telegram in the world calls the congratulatory telegram sent by N.S. Khrushchev on April 12, 1961 to Yury Gagarin which was sold for 68,500 dollars in New York at an auction of Sotheby's on December 11, 1993.

• On November 28, 2010 there was a mass leak of diplomatic telegrams of the USA which began to be published on the WikiLeaks website. The total quantity of confidential diplomatic telegrams (the dispatches, cablegrams) which fell into hands of staff of WikiLeaks makes more than 250,000 classified documents.

• Now in the world more than one and a half million telex numbers. The telex is a type of document communication and the telex message is recognized as the document on the basis of international agreements of the 1930th years.

• In Russia there is a public service network in which each message is stored 7 months and can be found on all way and also can be issued to you from certifying by seal — as the document.

• In 1824 the English physicist Peter Barlow published wrong Law of Barlow which for several years stopped development of telegraphy.

Future of telegraph

Today possibilities of message exchange on the Telex network are saved in many respects thanks to e-mail. In Russia telegraph communication exists and until now, cable messages are transferred and accepted by means of special devices — the cable modems integrated in nodes of electric contact with personal computers of operators. Nevertheless, in some countries national operators considered telegraph an outdated type of communication and wound up all activities on departure and delivery of telegrams — telegrams in traditional value of this term. In the Netherlands telegraph communication stopped work in 2004. In January, 2006 the oldest American national operator Western Union announced complete cessation of service of the population on sending and delivery of cable messages. At the same time in Canada, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Japan some companies still support service for departure and delivery of traditional cable messages.