India Post has abandoned the telegram, product of a rhythmic language of keys that American painter Samuel Morse believed he immortalised with the first telegraphic message, "What hath God wrought," he sent from Washington DC to Baltimore on May 24, 1844.
The Morse code has suddenly become an obsolete tongue and the telegraph system a quaint relic of a distant past. This isn't moist-eyed sentimentality, but i do feel a tad sad, for, here is another instance of a great invention suddenly declared useless with not even antique value.
Once the telegraph was operationalised in British India in 1850 — the first experimental electric line was started between then Calcutta and Diamond Harbour on the Hooghly — it became the sinew of empire, rocketing information at speeds that was considered miraculous in that age which also heralded the industrial revolution. There were, of course, other startling advances in communication — the railways and steamships — that helped connect one corner of the globe to another.
But it was the growth of a worldwide network of lightening-fast cables and telegraph systems that removed the constraints of time and space, making it phenomenally easy to organise transcontinental trade and commerce and transmit news dispatches. Globally, the telegraph pushed the convergence of merchants, markets and the military.
It enabled the Great Powers to shape foreign policy and mould public opinion at home and abroad. By the time the oceans were wired and a direct link established between London and Calcutta, the telegraph helped the East India Company suppress the 1857 mutiny.
And when telegraph facilities were opened for commercial use in India in 1854, people in urban centres, who until then relied on homing pigeons, made a beeline for electric telegraphy, sending across messages of happiness and sorrow — the birth of a child, the death of a parent. Telegrams bearing grim messages — "MOTHER VERY ILL STOP RETURN FAST STOP" — would be sent out to lure an upset son back home. They often did the trick. The arrival of a telegram could bring happy tidings of a long-awaited job interview or an invite to a wedding and sometimes break-ups.
When the internet began its rapid ascent in the communications hierarchy in the 1990s with emails and instant messaging, it spelled the doom for the telegram — taar — a small string of words in capital letters with the only punctuation — full stop — spelled out at the end of each brief sentence.
Alongside postcards and inland letters, the small strips of paper bearing the telegram message would be pierced in a hook dangling from a nail on a wall. There they would pile up and gather cobwebs — an inbox of sorts, but out in the open for all to read. The only way you could get rid of them, if you wanted to get rid of them at all, would be by either setting fire to them or tearing them up, a process far slower than the instantaneous 'delete' that leaves behind no trail. No paper shards with their edges carrying the telltale black circular postmarks.
Yes, there is nothing like instant messaging on chat or a text. Replies are expected to be punched-in fast and received as quickly. Speed, in the context of a telegram or a text message, is a matter of scale. Back in the 19th and early 20th century, the arrival of an 'urgent' telegram in a day or two defined not just distance and speed. There was a touch of the personal; there was urgency, even anxiety, to both 'send' and 'reply'.
While emails, text messages and online social networking have brought us closer, they are also pulling us all further apart. Sometimes, associations are taken for granted and replies are chores rather than deeper involvement.
The telegram will join its first cousin, trunk call, in oblivion. Perhaps a rickety machine will find its way into the postal department's museum, if there is one. What hath GoI wrought?
The Morse code has suddenly become an obsolete tongue and the telegraph system a quaint relic of a distant past. This isn't moist-eyed sentimentality, but i do feel a tad sad, for, here is another instance of a great invention suddenly declared useless with not even antique value.
Once the telegraph was operationalised in British India in 1850 — the first experimental electric line was started between then Calcutta and Diamond Harbour on the Hooghly — it became the sinew of empire, rocketing information at speeds that was considered miraculous in that age which also heralded the industrial revolution. There were, of course, other startling advances in communication — the railways and steamships — that helped connect one corner of the globe to another.
But it was the growth of a worldwide network of lightening-fast cables and telegraph systems that removed the constraints of time and space, making it phenomenally easy to organise transcontinental trade and commerce and transmit news dispatches. Globally, the telegraph pushed the convergence of merchants, markets and the military.
It enabled the Great Powers to shape foreign policy and mould public opinion at home and abroad. By the time the oceans were wired and a direct link established between London and Calcutta, the telegraph helped the East India Company suppress the 1857 mutiny.
And when telegraph facilities were opened for commercial use in India in 1854, people in urban centres, who until then relied on homing pigeons, made a beeline for electric telegraphy, sending across messages of happiness and sorrow — the birth of a child, the death of a parent. Telegrams bearing grim messages — "MOTHER VERY ILL STOP RETURN FAST STOP" — would be sent out to lure an upset son back home. They often did the trick. The arrival of a telegram could bring happy tidings of a long-awaited job interview or an invite to a wedding and sometimes break-ups.
When the internet began its rapid ascent in the communications hierarchy in the 1990s with emails and instant messaging, it spelled the doom for the telegram — taar — a small string of words in capital letters with the only punctuation — full stop — spelled out at the end of each brief sentence.
Alongside postcards and inland letters, the small strips of paper bearing the telegram message would be pierced in a hook dangling from a nail on a wall. There they would pile up and gather cobwebs — an inbox of sorts, but out in the open for all to read. The only way you could get rid of them, if you wanted to get rid of them at all, would be by either setting fire to them or tearing them up, a process far slower than the instantaneous 'delete' that leaves behind no trail. No paper shards with their edges carrying the telltale black circular postmarks.
Yes, there is nothing like instant messaging on chat or a text. Replies are expected to be punched-in fast and received as quickly. Speed, in the context of a telegram or a text message, is a matter of scale. Back in the 19th and early 20th century, the arrival of an 'urgent' telegram in a day or two defined not just distance and speed. There was a touch of the personal; there was urgency, even anxiety, to both 'send' and 'reply'.
While emails, text messages and online social networking have brought us closer, they are also pulling us all further apart. Sometimes, associations are taken for granted and replies are chores rather than deeper involvement.
The telegram will join its first cousin, trunk call, in oblivion. Perhaps a rickety machine will find its way into the postal department's museum, if there is one. What hath GoI wrought?
Source:-The Times of India
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