In the era of Instagram and Snapchat, it may seem strange that Belgium is still using this technology from the 19th century.

In Britain, where the telegraph was invented in the 1830s, it was abandoned as early as 1982.

The US followed the British lead much later, ending telegraph service in 2006. And even India, the world's largest telegraph user, abandoned it in 2013.

• The last telegrams in the history of the country were sent to India
• India closes telegraph agency due to losses
• "Beware, people!": the last telegram in the world

Photo credit, Getty Images

WWII British telegram: "Let there be many happy memories and sunny days. Post Office Girls"

The Belgian Telegraph has recently been used by only 10 companies and a few individuals. They were mainly bailiffs who needed a system in which the fact of sending and receiving messages could be legally recorded. nine0011

In order to send a telegram, you had to call a special number and dictate your message, which was then sent by mail.

But given that a standard 20-word telegram costs 23 euros 75 cents in Belgium (plus 90 cents for delivery in Brussels and suburbs), it is not surprising that in the era of unlimited text messages, telegrams had a hard time competing with modern technology.

Image copyright Viktor Budan/Valentin Mastyukov/TASS

Messages sent using the telegraph had to be deciphered

Brevity is key

Before the invention of the telephone, the telegraph was the only means of transmitting information over long distances in real time.

Telegraph operators mainly used Morse code. At the other end, it was translated into ordinary language, first by operators, and later by special machines.

The text was then printed out and delivered to the addressee. Thousands of telegram deliverers worked at post offices around the world. nine0011

Image copyright, Empics

19th-century telegraph

Since the sender had to pay for each letter, a particular style of writing developed, somewhat reminiscent of modern text messages.

For example, the use of the word "stop" was necessary in order for the recipient to understand where the end of the sentence was. And since telegrams were expensive, people began to come up with as short phrases and abbreviations as possible.

Famous Telegrams

• British writer Evelyn Waugh worked as a correspondent for the Daily Mail in the 1930s and reported on the war in Abyssinia. Once, while composing a telegram, he demonstrated the ability to handle the word, inherent in this English master of the pen. Evelyn Waugh decided to put an end to the unsubstantiated stories that an American nurse was allegedly blown up by a mine during the hostilities in Adova. He did this with two words, one of which he invented himself. "Nurse Unupblown", - said the writer, which can be translated as "Nurse Unblown". nine0004
• Brevity is the sister of talent, the absence of which could not be blamed on Oscar Wilde. One day a famous writer sent a very short telegram to his publisher asking how his book was selling. The entire telegram consisted of a single question mark: "?" The publisher answered just as briefly: "!".
• In the 19th century, British General Charles Napier was ordered to defeat the rebels operating in the then Indian province of Sindh (now Pakistan). However, the general greatly exceeded his powers, completely capturing the province. After which, as they said, he sent a one-word telegram to the commander: "Peccavi". It means "I have sinned" in Latin. In English, the phrase "I have sinned" (I have sinned) sounds exactly the same as "I captured Sindh." Later it turned out that the author of this pun was an English schoolgirl who sent it to the satirical magazine Punch. Nevertheless, he is still often attributed to General Napier. nine0004

Evelyn Waugh worked as a correspondent for the Daily Mail newspaper in the 1930s and reported on the war in Abyssinia

Skip the Podcast and continue reading.

Podcast

What was that?

We quickly, simply and clearly explain what happened, why it's important and what's next.

episodes

The End of History Podcast

With the advent of telephone communications, the telegraph became an increasingly archaic, expensive, and inconvenient system. nine0011

But the telegraph and telegrams existed in our lives for a long time, primarily thanks to cinematography.

Not so long ago, in Hollywood films, there was almost an obligatory scene when the bride or groom at the wedding read aloud the telegrams of the guests who could not come to the celebration.

More recently, a Briton or a British woman received a congratulatory telegram from the Royal Palace on her 100th birthday.

And, of course, the British know from war films that during the years of the two world wars, telegrams brought terrible news: after all, this was the way in Britain that the death of a soldier was reported to his relatives. nine0011

Yes, the world will not turn upside down after Belgium gets rid of its telegraph.

But just 100 years ago, it was amazing and seemed like the most advanced technology that completely changed the lives of the people of that time.

The birth, flourishing and death of the telegraph / Sudo Null IT News

A few decades ago, the telegram was a real event. The postman rang the doorbell, announced the message, handed over the envelope. But only the head of the family could read the telegram. They looked for glasses for him for several minutes while he stood with this telegram, then he first silently, and then read the message aloud. By telegram they informed about death, about birth, congratulated on holidays. Today it is easier to do this - you can send a text message or a message on social networks. It’s just that paper media was sometimes kept longer than our phones now live. nine0011

Let's remember how it all began and how the telegraph became one of the best and fastest means of communication.

Telegram to the parents of cosmonaut German Titov. GS Titov Museum

Europe

Swiss physicist Georges Louis Lessage in 1774 assembled one of the first operating models of an electric telegraph. Information was transmitted between two rooms of his house, and each of the 26 letters of the alphabet corresponded to a separate wire.

Another inventor, Lomon, used a single wire to transmit information. This is an excerpt from an article published in Dublin in 1793: "Paris, October 16, 1787. In the evening I was with Monsieur Lomont, a very witty and inventive mechanic who improved the cotton spinning machine ... In electricity, he made a wonderful discovery. You write two or three words on paper, he takes the sheet into the room and turns on the machine Locked in a cylindrical case, on top of which is an electrometer - a small cork ball, a wire is connected to a cylinder and an electrometer in another room, and Lomon's wife, noticing the corresponding movements of the ball, writes down the words. It follows that the inventor formed an alphabet of movements. Since the length of the wire does not affect the effect, correspondence can be carried out at any distance within the city or outside its walls, or for purposes more worthy. However this machine is used, it is a wonderful invention. " nine0011

Telegraph of Jean Louis Lessage

On February 22, 1804, Francisco Salvá presented an electric telegraph based on the Volta battery at the Academy of Sciences in Barcelona. The system consisted of six small containers of water. Two wires are lowered into the liquid, and depending on the change in their polarity, each tank shows two signals due to the release of hydrogen.

More detailed information, including the alphabet for decoding signals, has not reached us. nine0011

Telegraph Francisco Salva

Five years later, a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, Sömmerring, at the behest of King Maximillian, invents the telegraph, again using electrolysis and a voltaic column. An aquarium was placed on the receiving side, in which hydrogen bubbles were emitted from the electrode corresponding to the desired letter. Half as many oxygen bubbles formed from the second letter - that is, two symbols went along the wires at the same time.

Sömmering telegraph

In 1820, the Danish physicist Hans Christian Oersted sent out a pamphlet "Experiments concerning the action of electric conflict on a magnetic needle" to accessible scientific institutions and journals.

At lectures at the university, he demonstrated the heating of a wire by electricity from a voltaic column. During the experiment, a marine compass lay on the table, over the top of which a wire passed. When the scientist closed the electrical circuit, the compass needle deviated. According to legend, one of those present in the audience noticed this. Another legend says that the scientist himself noticed this deviation. Oersted, in the course of his experiments, found that when the distance from the wire to the arrow is less than 3/4 inch, the deviation is 45 °, and as the distance increases, the angle decreases proportionally. The amount of deviation varies depending on the power of the device. Oersted tested the effect on a wire made of different materials, tried to shield the arrow with wood, glass, resin, and placed it in water. nine0011

In an 1820 pamphlet, he writes: “The main conclusion from these experiments is that the magnetic needle deviates from its equilibrium position under the action of the voltaic apparatus and that this effect occurs when the circuit is closed, and it does not appear when the circuit is open. Precisely because the circuit remained open, attempts of the same kind, made a few years ago by famous physicists, were not crowned with success.

The discovery of Hans Christian Oersted served as the basis for electromagnetic telegraphs. nine0011

Deflection of a magnetic needle under the influence of electric current

Russia

In 1832, Paul Schilling, a Russian diplomat and historian, a participant in the Patriotic War, assembled an electromagnetic telegraph in St. Petersburg. Telegraph technology was based on the effect of deflection of a magnetic needle when interacting with an electromagnetic field from electrical wires. The background of this invention is extremely interesting: Schilling five years earlier blew up underwater mines by means of an electric current flowing through rubber-insulated wires. nine0011

Three or four keys were pressed simultaneously to transmit one letter. On the receiving apparatus, the conductors were connected to an electromagnet with a magnetic needle hanging above it, which turned when current flowed through the wire. Along with the arrow turned a signal circle, black on one side and white on the other. Schilling developed a special code so that six arrows with signal circles would be enough to transmit all the letters of the Russian alphabet. In a minute, ten characters could be transmitted over eight wires. nine0011

Schilling's six-point multiplier telegraph machine

In 1841, the first regular telegraph line was opened connecting the Winter Palace with the General Staff. This happened after the death of the inventor in 1837. But Schilling's work was continued by Boris Semyonovich Jacobi, who by 1839 created several telegraph systems, including a writing one.

In Boris Jacobi's writing telegraph, an electromagnet set in motion a pencil that leaves notes on a moving porcelain board. The device worked on the line Winter Palace - General Staff - Tsarskoye Selo. The records were difficult to decipher, which the inventor was not happy about. nine0011

Jacobi by 1845 made a synchronous pointer with a horizontal dial, electromagnetic drive and keyboard, and by 1850 - the world's first direct-printing telegraph. Only his work was considered a military secret by the government, which is why few people knew about the project.

BS Yakobi's pointer telegraph apparatus with a vertical dial

In 1844 Jacobi was invited to build a telegraph line along the railway between Moscow and St. Petersburg. The inventor proposed to include an auxiliary battery in the line, which will allow transmission in case of damage to the insulation of the underground cable. A similar device was then used when laying a cable along the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. nine0011

Unfortunately, Jacobi did not complete the line, the order for the construction of a network of telegraph lines was eventually received by the German company "Siemens & Halske"

station in the station building of the St. Petersburg-Moscow railway. On October 1 of this year, the Central Telegraph company begins its history. In 1869 the station moved to Myasnitskaya Street. nine0011

By the end of 1855, the telegraph covered the cities of Central Russia and began to connect the country with Europe. In 1880, several types of telegraph apparatuses and teletypes were used in Russia.

Central Telegraph on Myasnitskaya Street, circa 1900

USA

American inventor Samuel Morse patented his version of the telegraph in 1840. The key or "hammer" closed and opened the electrical circuit, the automatic receiver recorded the signals. Current pulses of a certain duration caused an electromagnetic pen to oscillate, reproducing "dots" and "dashes" on a paper tape. The pen either squeezed out the signals or applied them with ink. nine0011

Telegraph key, aka "hammer"

In 1843, Congress passed a bill and granted the inventor a subsidy for the construction of a line between Washington and Baltimore, 65 kilometers long.

The first attempt to lay a cable underground using Ezra Cornell's invention - a special trench plow - was unsuccessful. But in 1844 the line was opened, the wires went along the telegraph poles. So you could save on insulation.

Amos Kendall, a former postmaster general in two cabinets of presidents, immediately realized how useful the telegraph was, with its high speed of information transmission, and attracted investors to the project. Morse began licensing his invention, and by 1851 fifty independent telegraph companies had opened in the United States. nine0011

Illustration from Ezra Cornell's cable plow patent. Source

In 1846 Royal Earl House patented a printing telegraph capable of transmitting forty words per minute. The patent for this type of telegraph was owned by Judge Samuel Selden, with whom Hyrum Sibley, Sheriff of Monroe County, New York, founded the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company (NYMVPTC). Seven years later, the name changed to "Western Union" - "Western Union". nine0011

Instead of laying new telegraph lines, entrepreneurs began to buy up existing ones and combine them into one system. In three years, the number of Western Union offices increased to 4,000, and capital - from 220 thousand dollars to 48 million.

Sending a telegram across the US in 1854 cost $20 per message. Because of this, there were not so many applicants, and businessmen willingly sold their companies to Hiram Sibley. In 1854 Western Union bought a patent for the Morse telegraph. nine0011

Printing telegraph 1900, manufactured by Siemens & Halske, St. Petersburg

In 1861, Western Union connected the West and East coasts of the United States with a single transcontinental line in 112 days. Before this line appeared, messages traveled such a distance for ten days - they were carried by the most courageous and desperate young people on horseback. And not all letters reached because of the constant attacks of bandits.

Laying a transcontinental telegraph line. A Pony Express service employee greets construction workers. nine0220