the telegraph...?

Question

so im writing an essay about the telegraph, and i feel like im just writing the same thing over and over again.. =[
does anyone know anything special about it? how much did it cost to send a message? how long did it take.? stuff like that??

Answer 1

You paid by the word. It was different in small towns and big cities. It depended on where you wanted to send your telegram as to how long it took. It was was transmitted in minutes but they had to be delivered in person to the addressee so it depended how close you lived to town how long it took for you to actually receive it.

Back during WW1 and WW2 you didn't want to receive one because it usually meant your loved one was missing or dead. I have one that my aunt received when my cousin was missing on Corregidor during WW2. He was a prisoner of war for several months and was in the death march on Corregidor.

Here's some statistics you may want to use:

Western Union announced the discontinuation of all of its telegram services effective from the 31 January 2006. Only 20,000 telegrams were sent in 2005, compared with 20 million in 1929. According to Western Union, which still offers money transfer services, its last telegram was sent Friday, 27 January 2006[1]. The company stated that this was, "... the final transition from a communications company to a financial services company."[2]

Telegram service in the United States and Canada is still available, operated by iTelegram and Globegram. Some companies, like Swedish Telia still deliver telegrams, but they serve as nostalgic novelty items rather than a primary means of communication. The international telegram service formerly provided by British Telecom has been spun off [1] as an independent company which promotes their use as a retro greeting card or invitation.

Answer 2

The message, "What hath God wrought?" sent later by "Morse Code" from the old Supreme Court chamber in the United States Capitol to his partner in Baltimore, officially opened the completed line of May 24, 1844. Morse allowed Annie Ellsworth, the young daughter of a friend, to choose the words of the message, and she selected a verse from Numbers XXIII, 23: "What hath God wrought?", which was recorded onto paper tape. Morse's early system produced a paper copy with raised dots and dashes, which were translated later by an operator.

Telegraph companies charged based on the length of the message sent. Therefore, to save money, elaborate commercial codes were developed that encoded common phrases as words or numbers. Examples of these codes include the A.B.C Telegraphic Code, Bentleys Second Phrase Code and Unicode. In addition to more general commercial codes, there were a number of codes targeted at particular industries e.g. railways, cotton.


Good Luck!

Answer 3

Maybe this site will help:

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bltelegraph.htm