Wednesday, June 19, 2013

RIP: Telegrams no more....

On July 14th 2013, India will send the world's last telegraph message.  

144 years after Samuel Morse sent the first message, India, the last country to still use the system will cease operation with its final message.  

The US had discontinued telegraph messaging several years ago, but India continued with its widely used system.  Recent counts put the number of daily messages at around 5 thousand.   Telegraphing simply can not compete with text messaging and email, for speed.  This is one of the contributing factor in the state run system that is incurring 23 million dollars in losses a year.  At its peak in 1985, 60 million telegrams were exchanged.  Now the Indian government is the primary user of telegrams, making up 65 percent of the market. However, the remaining 35 percent of users are the general public. 

3 comments:

Dave Tackett said...

Seriously? When did the get rid of the pony express - 2010?

kallamis said...

LOL. Nice one Dave.

Beam Me Up said...

sometimes you have to wonder....have you seen how long it takes a letter to cross the country now?