Welcome to Telegrams4u
Send Something Special - send a telegram UK & worldwide
Telegram History
History of the Telegram
From the Jazz Age through the years following World War II, there was scarcely a Hollywood melodrama or screwball comedy whose story didn’t turn on the sudden arrival of a telegram.
The scene might vary from film to film but usually went something like this:
Doorbell rings.
Enter polite smartly dressed Western Union messenger who hands over an envelope, gets a coin or two in return, then exits.
Envelope is torn open by recipient, whose face is transformed by extreme emotion as he or she reads it.
Finally, a close up of the telegram itself lets the audience in on the news that provoked the smile, shriek, or sob, or sometimes even a full blown swoon.
In real life too, the sight of a messenger coming up the walk made hearts flutter and pulses quicken.
Reproduced with kind permission from Telegram! Modern History As Told Through More Than 400 Witty, Poignant, and Revealing Telegrams
Telegraph Time Line
Since the beginning of time, man has experimented with ways of sending information over great distances. Smoke signals, fire towers, flags and talking drums were all used as early systems of communication. It was the development of electricity that enabled the modern telegraph to come into being.
1727 – In London, Stephen Gray transmits electricity 700 feet through a wire suspended in the air by silk threads
1753 – First practical suggestion for an electrical telegraph is made in Scotland
1774 – First functioning telegraph is demonstrated in Geneva, Switzerland
1793 – The word 'telegramme' is used with reference to sending and receiving messages by means of an optical communication system
1832 – Samuel Finley Breese Morse propounds the theory that information can be transmitted by opening and closing an electrical circuit
1836 – Morse builds his first functional telegraph instrument
1844 – Morse sends the first public telegraph message “What Hath God Wrought”
1851 – Over 50 separate telegraph companies in the United States
1852 – The word “Telegram” is first used in the Albany Evening Journal
1854 – Military telegraph is used for the first time during the Crimean War
1858 – Telegraph systems of Europe and North America are connected
1895 – Western Union transmitting 58 million messages annually
1917 – King George V first sent out a message on the occasion of a 100th birthday
1920’s – Telegraphers stationed at boxing matches and baseball games
1930’s – Singing telegrams introduced in addition to Santagrams, Bunneygrams and Kiddiegrams
1940’s – Postal Telegraph and Western Union merge and telegram service suspended in the UK due to War
1945 to 1968 National and Maritime telegrams at their peak
2006 – Western Union delivers its last telegram
Consise. Compressed. Condensed.
This was the character of most telegrams but there were occasions when these qualities were taken to an extreme.
Did you know....
The two shortest wires on record concerned a rather long novel.
Wondering how the sale of Les Miserables was going, Victor Hugo, in exile on the island of Guernsey, telegraphed his publisher:
?
To which the reply came back:
!
Consise, compressed & condensed - you can't get any shorter than that, can you!