LiveScience.com – Era Ends: Western Union Stops Sending Telegrams — It all began with the telegram and now that part of the story is over. Sad in some weird way. And indeed, no fanfare since it happened a few days ago.
After 145 years, Western Union has quietly stopped sending telegrams.
On the company’s web site, if you click on “Telegrams” in the left-side navigation bar, you’re taken to a page that ends a technological era with about as little fanfare as possible:
“Effective January 27, 2006, Western Union will discontinue all Telegram and Commercial Messaging services. We regret any inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you for your loyal patronage. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact a customer service representative.”
The decline of telegram use goes back at least to the 1980s, when long-distance telephone service became cheap enough to offer a viable alternative in many if not most cases. Faxes didn’t help. Email could be counted as the final nail in the coffin.
found by Craig Ochs
related links:
A brief History of Telegrams
great photos from the telegram era
Interesting how long the service survived besides all alternate technology available. I sent one and only one telegram as it happens 15 years ago, but I never received one. Some things goes by really fast. I remember the old ISA 8, ISA16 and the huge vesabus. VLbus passed by really fast.
Don’t worry if you want to send a message in a nostalgic way, you can still send a Radio Gram via any ham radio operator for free. If you know any ham radio operator just go to them, and they will be happy to help you get a message sent via the national traffic system. I myself have handled traffic myself.
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NO MORE TELEGRAMS STOP
And yet, that second “t” in at&t lives on, even though the medium is now officially gone.
I heard a rumor that it has to do with treaties to cross native american lands, and that at&t holds onto this last vestage for that reason.
Yes, I was surprised that they still existed. Still it’s sad to see them go.
Plus ca change…
Funny how so many readers are commenting that they weren’t aware that this service still existed. Even though e-mail and its new-gen messaging buddies have finally killed off the telegram, one wonders if the ephemeral nature of an e-mail message – vs. the Very Big Deal of receiving a telegram – will change the way we communicate at pivotal moments in our lives.
Somehow, zinging a message to someone’s BlackBerry on her wedding day just doesn’t cut it.
On of the last uses of telegrams was to comunicate between land and see and it took SMS and email to find anything that could replace it, the problem at sea is that the old and most uset satelite system the inmersat C, is pretty slow and can only send and transmit text.
The system requires the transfer from satelite signal to paper or email by an land station, and until resently email was not used as widely as it is now, so telegrams were sort of in use by the offshore business up until the late 90’ies.
I had a great-Uncle that always sent telegrams about dead or dying relatives. I’ve haven’t seen one since the 60’s. I think the last ones was received in the mail. I guess they printed them out locally and dropped then in first class mail.