Why in News ?
On July 14, 2013, India shut its state-run telegram service, bringing an end to a transformative technology that had served the country well for 163 years! A.S.Ganesh tells you how this technology came to be and how it ran its course in our country…
Today’s News :
In all likelihood, you are probably thinking about the instant messaging service Telegram Messenger, which is more commonly known just as Telegram. Ironically, the founders of this service chose the name to emphasise on its primary function – instant messaging.
This is because telegrams, a traditional method of sending messages, were used for quick communication in the past. The messages were sent by electricity or radio, before they were printed and delivered to the recipient’s home or office.
Telegraphy has been around
The idea of telegraphy, or the long-distance transmission of information using coded signals, have been around for centuries. The term telegraph, however, most commonly refers to the electric telegraph that was developed in the mid-19th Century and dominated the communication landscape for more than a century.
The person behind this is American inventor and painter Samuel F. B. Morse.
Morse is said to have struck upon the idea of using electricity to communicate over distances during a conversation in 1832 when he was returning from Europe aboard a ship.
He wondered if it was possible to send coded messages over a wire, but realised pretty quickly that his limited understanding about the nature of electricity wouldn’t suffice when it came to developing his idea.
Even though Morse was ready with his telegraph system in 1837 and had begun demonstrations, he had to wait for a considerable amount of time.
This was because the economic disaster known as the Panic of 1837 took place at about the same time and funds weren’t forthcoming for this project.
Sense of urgency
Still under British rule at the time, telegrams were an important tool of the colonial administration. While the government sent the bulk of the telegrams post independence as well, they were embraced by the common people as well for what it brought to them. Seen as a metaphor for an urgent message, telegrams weren’t curtailed by the delays of the postal system.
At its height in the 1980s, around 60 million telegrams were sent and received across India’s 45,000 offices. This number dwindled down to 75 offices by 2013, though there were franchises operating in every district of the country. The volume of telegrams too took a hit with the advent of newer technologies.