Next month, the last telegram in the world will be sent when India's state-owned telecom company shuts its telegraph service.
Remember being offered my first job by telegram - My parents had no phone .
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My father used to get shift changes and rest day working requests by telegram, delivered by a "boy" on a red post office BSA bantam.
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In the forties and very early fifties telegrams could be brought by boys on red GPO pushbikes. They were upsetting as they often contained bad or good news.
Working as a foreign hack before the internet I came to know telex which is basically the same technology. It could be a real hassle and time-consumer, like intercontinental telephone in those days. Email has eliminated all that at a stroke more or less, lucky young hounds mumble gripe...
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Office communications in the fifties and early sixties were basically phone, post and telegram. Then came the telex and in the nineties the fax machine was king. Email now rules although fax still has its uses. The Japanese love them.
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>> in the nineties the fax machine was king.
Fax was another dodgy technology that gave constant trouble I seem to remember.
AP photographer in Algiers in the late 70s turned up with a device in an aluminium attache case that could send photographs down the telephone. You wrapped the photo round a cylinder which then rotated as a spot of light scanned it, same principle as a cylinder gramophone. A rough 405-line monochrome TV-like image came out at the other end if you were lucky.
Yes my friends, that was state of the art only a couple of decades ago. And boy did those AP people curse the thing as they tried to get a decent phone connection from Algiers to Paris.
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>> Next month, the last telegram in the world will be sent when India's state-owned telecom
>> company shuts its telegraph service.
I didn't know it was no longer possible!
I want to send one now.
It doesn't seem that long since they were read out at weddings.
Ah...you can still send them, sort of -
www.telegramsonline.co.uk/index1.asp
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That's not a telegram, That's a letter.
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Chap i know was a telegram boy round the City during the 70's, the era of real hotpants and die hard mini skirt wearing office girls.
He reckoned that was worlds best job for a young man, can't argue with that.
thank gawd he isn't a retired TV celeb..;)
Last edited by: gordonbennet on Wed 19 Jun 13 at 19:22
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Yes they aren't proper, are they. The same day one has to be sent by 2pm and costs £39.95.
I don't suppose they are charged by the word though.
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I like this story
In 1933, Western Union introduced the singing telegram and became the source of a famously macabre joke: A woman, finding a Western Union messenger at the door, exclaims: "Great, I've always wanted a singing telegram." No, she's told, it's just a regular telegram. The woman pleads. The messenger finally sings.
DUM DE DUM DUM DUM. YOUR SISTER ROSE IS DEAD.
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When I was about 9 I went on a school trip to our local hauliers yard (Cadwalladers of Oswestry) and they were very keen to show they had two telex machines for communicating with drivers abroad. In those days (1978 ish) they stated it was the best way to communicate, as drivers could always find a post office, which always had telex machines in those days. Swept away by first faxes and subsequenty email to smart phones, I suppose.
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I worked in the Manchester Police information room in the late sixties for a couple of years.
We had about 4 telex machines clattering away in the adjoining room operated by some nice young ladies. I never did understand how the machines worked..........I found out how one of the ladies did, though !
I remember visiting my Aunt/Uncle in Westcliff when I was about 14. I went on the train and took my Elswick-Hopper bike down to explore Essex a bit. Happy, hot summer days !
I biked over to Cheshunt one day to see a girl I'd met camping in Keswick and had been writing to. The family offered me a bed for the night. I had no way of telling my Aunt as they had no phone so I sent a telegram from a phone box.......cost about 2 bob with the money fed into the black box in the kiosk.
In the 80s, when telegrams finished, I was a breakdown agent for Autohome Recovery of Northampton. They set up a service called Couriergram. I took quite a few by phone and delivered them but it wasn't viable for me to do it at their prices. A gram delivery would only pay me a couple of quid but a breakdown turnout to the same house would come in at about £25 turnout plus all milage. I don't think it lasted very long.
Blimey, just googlied them and they're still in existence after 31 years !
Ted
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When you think about it its odd that a hundred years ago you could send an urgent message by telegram to someone who didn't have a phone let alone a computer and they would receive it within a few hours. The same task would not be possible now.
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I spent a while in telex exchanges. They had two batteries +80v to earth and -80v to earth. It was possible to get a belt of 160v - it don't half hurt!
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Can you still get a telegram from the Queen? This suggests that you can. wiki.answers.com/Q/Who_can_get_a_telegram_from_the_Queen
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No you can't. As pointed out telegrams don't exist any more. If you request one you will you get a message delivered by Royal Mail "Special Delivery".
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I was awarded a place at Cambridge in 1968 by telegram, and I had to reply by telegram, which I wrote on the doorstep for the Post Office boy.
Does Telex ticker-tape still exist?
I was a guest in a London club in about 1973, and was shown the machine in the entrance. It was connected to Reuters, or somewhere, and produced a continuous chatter of tape with the latest world news. Passing members would pick up the emerging tape to see if anything interesting was happening anywhere.
Phileas Fogg at the Reform came to mind.
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>> I was awarded a place at Cambridge in 1968 by telegram, and I had to
>> reply by telegram, which I wrote on the doorstep for the Post Office boy.
Wouldn't it have been better written on a piece of paper?
:-D
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>> Wouldn't it have been better written on a piece of paper?
>> :-D
>>
Very Good!
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>> >>
>> >> Wouldn't it have been better written on a piece of paper?
>> >> :-D
>> >>
Eccles like?
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you mean the 5 bit murray tape, or the printed output tape?
by the 70s Most telex machines printed onto standard width continuous paper.
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>> you mean the 5 bit murray tape, or the printed output tape?
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>> by the 70s Most telex machines printed onto standard width continuous paper.
>>
No, it was a narrow tape, like the stuff Americans hurl out of windows on special occasions.
The table was littered with coils of it, periodically gathered up by a uniformed flunky.
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The last time I used a telegram service was whilst in the Soviet Caucasus during my student years. We were there shortly after the devastating earthquakes of 1988 in Armenia, which destroyed the cities of Spitak and Leninakan - names which you may still remember after all these years.
We were staying in a hotel in Tbilisi, Georgia, on the 13th floor, when an earthquake struck. At that precise moment I was in the bathroom, about to drop the kids off at the swimming pool, and it took me a few moments to realise what was happening - my room mate was looking out of the window and shouting at me that the people in the street below were running as fast as they could away from our swaying building. I though I was going to be found dead, Elvis stylee, in a few weeks time.
Fortunately the building survived, but I felt sure that the quake would have made the news back home, especially if other cities or towns weren't so lucky, or well constructed. Realising that my mother knew I was in the region, I felt I ought to get a message home PDQ to let her know I was OK. Telephones were not an option, as phone lines needed to be booked a week in advance to make an international call. So telegram it was. On our return to Moscow the next week, I made the phone line booking for a week hence and managed to speak to my mother. Needless to say, there had been no news of the quake in the UK and the telegram had only served to alarm and worry her. Can't do right for doing wrong, thought I.
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Bloke I used to know was once a Post Office messenger. He used to putt-putt off from the delivery office on the red BSA Bantam, as far as the hedge behind which was hidden his BSA 650 Road Rocket. Telegrams were delivered in record time, then he used to putt-putt back to base.
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THAT........is Brilliant. Style or what..
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END OF ERA STOP - Zero
