On January 27, 2006 Western Union officially stopped sending telegrams. The fact that this was a non-event should tell you something about how important the telegram has become in our society but it wasn’t always that way. For many years the telegram was the only fast way to get a message transmitted over long distances. Indeed telegrams contributed much to our culture during the latter ninteenth and early twentieth centuries.
One of the contributions was the widespread use of code phrases and words to shorten a message. Today this may look something like “LOL” or “ROFL” in an instant message window but long before the invention of instant messaging telegraph companies and customers were abbreviating common messages with codes such as Western Union “92” code or “Wood’s 1864 Telegraphic Numerals”.
For more information on the history of the telegraph I suggest looking at “A Brief History of Telegrams” by the folks at retro-gram.com. You might also enjoy browsing some of the photographs at the British Science and Society Picture Library, which coincidentally has many other interesting historic science photographs, or reading about telegraph workers at the Norwegian Telecom Museum.
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