India To Send World's Last Telegram 205
New submitter afarhan writes "India will pull the plug on its 160-year-old telegram service on 14 July, this year. This will probably be the last telegram ever sent in the world. However, telegrams are still relevant in this vast country. More than 500 million people are still without access to a phone or Internet. For these people, telegram still remains the only digital communication available. 'At their peak in 1985, 60 million telegrams were being sent and received a year in India from 45,000 offices. Today, only 75 offices exist, though they are located in each of India's 671 districts through franchises. And an industry that once employed 12,500 people, today has only 998 workers.' In India, telegram is also considered a legal correspondence."
The Last Telegram (Score:5, Funny)
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... and this kind of thing is what keeps me coming back to Slashdot. :)
not the world's last (Score:4, Interesting)
When Western Union discontinued its telegraph service in 2006, it sold off the network to iTelegram [itelegram.com], which inexplicably still seems to be in business.
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When Western Union discontinued its telegraph service in 2006, it sold off the network to iTelegram [itelegram.com], which inexplicably still seems to be in business.
Aside from countries where telegrams have entrenched legal status, I imagine that the 'novelty' market alone could probably sustain a telegraph operator well into the future.
As long as there is a nonzero supply of people who want to score charm and novelty points by sending somebody a telegram(and they do have some level of popular recognition and ye olde charme from period fiction and pop history), you have a customer base, and it's not as though there is anything requiring you to actually transmit the thi
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This looks like it could conceivably have value:
http://www.itelegram.com/telegram/contract-cancellation.asp [itelegram.com]
Legally accepted time stamped with receipt- much fast than you'd ever get with registered mail.
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Looking at the sample telegram [itelegram.com], you can tell that theres at least one diehard Twilight Zone fan in that company.
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In the UK, the Queen still sends people telegrams on their 100th birthday.
Nope ... Service still available in Europe (Score:4, Informative)
Well sorry for the Article but it's actually false :) Telegram is still alive and kicking in Europe ... for instance in Belgium where you can still send Telegrams right now !
Here is the national telecommunication operator page about it :
www.belgacom.be/en/private/products-and-services/fixed-telephony/options-and-services/other-services?page=p_other_services_available
Telegram
There are several formulas to choose from:
Comfort Telegram
A telegram ordered via the post.
With an illustration for offering condolences or congratulations.
Without an illustration.
The Standard National Telegram
The "conventional", revised and corrected telegram delivered by Taxipost, our courier service. Telegrams sent before midday are delivered the same day; those sent after midday are delivered the next working day at the latest.
The Flash Telegram
The quickest method. As soon as our telegraph operators receive your telegram, our courier service makes a special delivery as quickly as possible. It is also possible to send a Flash Telegram and add a gift.
For international messages, your telegram will be sent by our telegraphists to the country of destination. It is delivered in accordance with the terms and conditions of express delivery in the country concerned.
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And the NSA's Project SHAMROCK *still* intercepts every last one of them after all these years.
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Still available in Canada [telegrams.ca] as well. Telegrams Canada used to be run by CNCP Tel. AT&T Canada/Unitel Communications. [ic.gc.ca] But still offers full telegram and courier services.
Re:Nope ... Service still available in Europe (Score:5, Informative)
Although it's called telegram, you can be sure belgacom doesn't have a pair of operators to translate your email into morse code so it can be sent to the other side. Whereas in India, they literally have someone sitting on a wire clicking short and long signs.
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Although it's called telegram, you can be sure belgacom doesn't have a pair of operators to translate your email into morse code so it can be sent to the other side. Whereas in India, they literally have someone sitting on a wire clicking short and long signs.
That sounds like telegraph, not telegram.
Re:Nope ... Service still available in Europe (Score:4, Informative)
Shit... (Score:2)
...I am only 53 so I will never get one from the Queen when I am 100. Oh well.
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...I am only 53 so I will never get one from the Queen when I am 100. Oh well.
The Queen will probably be a King anyway by that time... ;)
Ok, you'll never know how long the current one lives, and you'll never know what Charles' next surgery will be, so YMMV
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...I am only 53 so I will never get one from the Queen when I am 100. Oh well.
The Queen will probably be a King anyway by that time... Ok, you'll never know how long the current one lives, and you'll never know what Charles' next surgery will be, so YMMV ;)
Well considering the telegram would have to be 47 years from now, Charles would have to live to 111. Must be a frustrating life, he's now 64 and in an age where most are looking to settle into retirement he's still waiting for the "job" he's been chosen to do from birth. And if her mother is anything like her mother again, it might still take another 15 years because I definitively think this is going to be one of those "over my dead body" successions.
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[...] And if her mother is anything like her mother again, [...]
You are saying he did it already?
(Sorry, couldn't resist)
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[...] shouldn't that be *fewer* illiterates [...]
Yes it should.
;)
Initially it was my own sloppiness, my mistake.
However, I was using that sig for quite some time (not slashdot even) before anyone noticed the mistake and corrected me, so I decided to keep it the way it was, with the mistake, since it seemed (seems) to prove my statement.
What it means, you almost got it right, it's just the opposite
In any educated country, there are far more people who can read than there are illiterates.
However, of those people who are able to read, many do not thi
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Yeah, that's why I added the bit about it being *more* illiterates. It's unfortunate but it is the way it is. The end result is ignorance, blind allegiance to power, blind partisanship, racism, etc... Ah well... Ride it 'til the wheels fall off I suppose.
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Or, maybe Charles realises how lucky he is to be a 64-year-old whose parents are both alive and well and hopes the day never comes when he takes on that "job". The Windsors may not impress me, but don't strike me as being like the Borgias.
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Well considering the telegram would have to be 47 years from now, Charles would have to live to 111. Must be a frustrating life, he's now 64 and in an age where most are looking to settle into retirement he's still waiting for the "job" he's been chosen to do from birth. And if her mother is anything like her mother again, it might still take another 15 years because I definitively think this is going to be one of those "over my dead body" successions.
I know a lot of us are hoping that Liz outlives Charles. Charles is a nutjob who hasn't found an alternative medicine he doesn't like, and he earns a decent penny selling all kinds of woo.
We are one elderly woman's heartbeat away from having a fraudster and a lunatic as a head of state. Granted that'd probably improve relations
Required Telegram Joke (Score:5, Funny)
M * A * S * H (Score:3)
Hawkeye: Dear Dad, I am not dead. Stop. Hope you are the same. Stop. Thinking of selling my golf clubs? Stop. Spending my insurance money? Stop.
and in the usa faxes are legal correspondences as (Score:2)
and in the usa faxes are legal correspondences as well
National Traffic System (Score:2)
If you're interested in an amateur, as opposed to a commercial, version of a radiotelegraph network, have a look at the National Traffic System [arrl.org]. This system, created in the 1940s, has many features that predate modern digital networks, including a Request To Send / Clear To Send (RTS/CTS) system, and separate logical channels for network control and data.
Also telex (Score:2)
In 1997 I has at the US consulate in Melbourne organising visas for myself and my then partner. It got complicated and the consulate had to send a telex to the US to deal with the issue. Obviously we used email for organising the rest of the trip.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re: Not the last one (Score:2)
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Add Japan to the list of countries where telegrams are are? ;)
It's okay - I'm still stuck on digital vs. analog. I suspect that the systems still in use today are entirely digital (I'd hope they are) with them basically just being email and print services but, well, I'm quite thoroughly lost when we talk about traditional systems.
MIGRATING (Score:5, Funny)
TELEGRAPH SERVICE SHUTTING DOWN TELL MOTHER RAJESH MUST LEARN TWITTER FOLLOW ME AT ANAND UNDERSCORE BANDYOPADHYAY STOP
(Silly filter, telegrams *are* printed in all caps). Lorem ipsum something something dies irae dies illa solvet seclum in favilla.
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The reason they are all CAPS is that they are transmitted using Baudot Code, a 5 level code with no lower case and a very limited set of symbols.
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Good - I knew that the character set was limited but not the name of the code. Now Anand can use punctuation for free. (:
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[...] are transmitted using Baudot Code, a 5 level code [...]
Thus telegraph messages were usually preceded with "CZCZ" (or something similar) to make sure you are in "letter shift", i.e. the following characters were letters, not numbers or special characters.
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Actually, companies like Siemens recognized even in those days that lowercase is easier on the eye than UPPERCASE and many
of their telex machines printed only lowercase.
oh noes! (Score:2)
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dies irae dies illa solvet seclum in favilla.
Just tweet the text (Score:2)
We should really answer the question (Score:2)
I think it's about time to answer the original question [wikipedia.org]:
42 STOP
Service still available in Venezuela (Score:2)
So it seems I can send a telegram inside venezuela, and to belgium at least, but not to indi come next month. Ok, I'll keep that in mind....
From the post operator in Venezuela:
http://www.ipostel.gob.ve/servicios.html
Telegrama: Es un escrito destinado a ser transmitido por telegrafía para su entrega al destinatario, con cobertura nacional e internacional.
Modalidades del Telegrama:
Telegrama Ordinario: Son los telegramas cuya aceptación es obligatoria y no lleva ninguna indicación de servicio.
Te
Irony (Score:4, Interesting)
The end of the article gave me a chuckle. A guy is threatening to go on a hunger strike to keep the service going, insisting that it's a vital tool for fighting corruption ( presumably gov't corruption ) He sent his demands to the PM and others, via telegram of course. But someone at the telegraph office viewed the telegram as "objectionable" and have chosen not to deliver it.
So while India might still accept telegrams as legal documents, having a communications medium that requires a man-in-the-middle to function seems to be one that is too easily thwarted by the man in the middle.
Hopefully the guy on the hunger strike backed up his telegram with an email.
What's the meaning of the 2nd "T" in AT&T ? (Score:2)
My first job was delivering telegrams (by bicycle) in downtown Buffalo during the 1960's.
My Western Union office had its hours posted on the door: "We Never Close". The building's been torn down, so, in a sense, the message turned out to be true.
Question: what'll happen to the American Telephone and Telegraph Corporation?
Here in Berkeley, one of the main drags is Telegraph Avenue and a cell-phone store is named "Telegraph Wireless"
Service still available in Argentina (Score:2)
If you do this I'll kill myself! (Score:2)
The telegram was from A.P. Tripathi, who runs an anticorruption nonprofit in Lucknow. Addressed to the president, prime minister, the minister for communications, and others, it said that he would engage in a Gandhian fast unto death if telegram services were shut down, and if he died, then the addressed officials would be responsible.
Man threatens to starve himself to death and claims that I'm the one to blame. I can't see any way to respond to this other than to say "sure, sounds good".
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Digital. (Score:2)
I don't know much about telegraphs, but I'm pretty sure they're analog machines.
No, they're a form of digital communication; they use on-off keying (OOK) [wikipedia.org].
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Not only that, they're digital communication with the first known implementation of Huffman coding as a form of data compression :-D
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I've been pondering this... They're binary aren't they? Does the fact that it is binary confer digital status automatically? They signal does vary, it has long tones, off, and short tones. Each is different according to the key user. I've always considered it analog for those reasons BUT I'm now pondering and think I may have been mistaken all those years. (My ego isn't so frail that I'm bothered by being mistaken. How else would I learn?)
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It does not matter that the long and short tones vary. For example, the voltage from a transistor on a chip will regularly vary over a few millivolts. The point is that , the variation doesn't encode anything. All the information is encoded in a sequence that has 2 states. Is the voltage greater than 5mV or less than 1 mV. That makes it digital.
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That too makes sense. Thanks. :)
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I don't know much about telegraphs, but I'm pretty sure they're analog machines.
No, they're a form of digital communication; they use on-off keying (OOK) [wikipedia.org].
Not in Australia, when we still had them. Aussie telegraph machines used a 5 character Baudot coding, with voltage levels high enough to operate relays directly. At least the last mile to the customer premises operated that way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baudot_code
Since India was also ex-British Empire, I suspect it also operated that way.
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5 character Baudot coding
That's 5 bit encoding, which makes it digital.
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Is this accurate? I don't know much about telegraphs, but I'm pretty sure they're analog machines.
All real world machines are analog, but the communication is digital (signal/no signal). SOS = ... --- ... = 101010001110111011100010101 (for human convenience a dash is three dots long as is the pause between letters, seven between words). I agree it's an odd wording though, with that logic the blind have been reading digital books for ages - with their digits, even.
SOS (Score:2)
SOS, as an emergency indicator, is a single symbol, not three separate letters -- di-di-di-dah-dah-dah-di-di-dit or, in your notation, 10101011101110111010101.
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They are analog but for the sake of brevity there's no correct answer to this one as far as I can tell. Here's someone who's put the time into authoring a reply to this very idea:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080817073539AAhrHHM [yahoo.com]
The short answer is, well, call 'em analog. They *can* be digital. I suspect that most modern "telegraph" services are entirely digital. They also use just the 1 really. With Morse code they don't use the "off" dead-space for anything either really. SOS would be ... -
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As long as information is encoded in a sequence of 2 states, it is digital - period. Any real world machine, is usually analog. The SIGNAL on the other hand, as encoded, detected and interpreted, is digital.
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That makes sense - but is this really two states? It is on, off, on for a longer duration. I'm pretty certain that I've been wrong all these years and that it is digital (I'm okay with admitting that). I'm still pretty curious though - I linked a handy link in there that describes it a bit. It is binary, binary is digital. Hmm... So, yeah, I guess it'd be digital.
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I'm pretty certain that I've been wrong all these years and that it is digital
"On", "Off" and "On Longer" are discrete and thus digital.
In fact, "digital" doesn't need to only encode 2 values: remember that the word "digital" is the adjective form of "digit", and we have 10 discrete fingers. (Which is why we count in decimal and computers, which have only two discrete values, counts in binary.)
summary: digital signals over analog media (Score:2)
It can also carry a digital signal like Morse or Baudot, which is what telegrams use.
Radio is exactly the same way - it can carry analog signal such as old fashioned AM ratio, or a digital signal like GSM.
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Much thanks. I always figured the variation in signal was what made it analog. I am not sure what made me think that, that and a few other things. I've been pretty sure it was analog for years but, yeah, it makes sense that it is digital. (My ego's not frail and I love to learn new things.)
You're awesome (Score:2)
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> SOS = ... --- ... = 101010001110111011100010101
I'd say it's more like:
10101000 11111100 10101001
Morse requires two bits to encode each symbol:
10 = dit (short)
11 = dah (long)
00 = character-marker
01 = word-marker
(other combos possible; though most would agree that the obvious alternative would be 10, 11, 00, and 01 (in order) for the choices above).
You can also represent all known Morse characters as 8-bit bytes by establishing a rule that 0=dit/short, 1=dah/long, and the last one is whichever value (0 o
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^^^ Argh. Bitten by preview-blindness after major editing. Ignore this line in the post above:
(other combos possible; though most would agree that the obvious alternative would be 10, 11, 00, and 01 (in order) for the choices above)
or pretend it says:
(other combos possible; though most would agree that the obvious alternative would be 00, 01, 10, and 11 (in order) for the choices above).
Re:digital? (Score:5, Interesting)
Morse code [wikipedia.org]does not necessarily a binary system. If sent by a machine, I could buy that, but it was designed to be sent by humans using a key. Later a two paddle bug was often used to speed up the code. One paddle sent a stream of dits, and the other keyed the dahs. you could vary the speed of the dits using a dial, but you varied the dahs using the paddle itself. Good operators would shorten the dahs, and use the fastest dits they could manage. So, you might use a dit from 40 wpm, but a dah from 45 wpm. The end result was code that was fairly easy to decode by a human operator, but difficult to decode by a machine. The best machines that I saw had an accuracy of about 85%, which was not good enough.
Later electronic bugs had two paddles that shaped both the dits and the dahs, but because the operator varied the space in between the elements you ended up with the same issues
A digital replacement for morse code was the Baudot Code [wikipedia.org]
.This used machine generated and read code. Early systems used a punch tape as storage medium.
I was a trained and certified Wireless Station Operator, when I first qualified I could send and receive 20> wpm using a stick (pencil) and hand key
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Is this accurate? I don't know much about telegraphs, but I'm pretty sure they're analog machines.
Even the very early (1700s) experimental telegraphs have been about delivering the codes for each letter in the alphabet, in a quantified manner. So by nature the telegraph has always been digital by its design.
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> but I'm pretty sure they're analog machines
Nope. It's digital. Two states, dot and dash. You could do a 1 for 1 binary encode.
As a matter of fact, the analog telephone system was a hack of a digital system.
--
BMO
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Now your post makes me ponder more...
See, you forget off and the variety in key styles. Hmm... I'm so confused. LOL I've long since thought it was analog but, now that I think about it... It really only has two states - on and off and the on state is varied in duration which is a part of why I've felt it was analog all these times.
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Morse Code was predigital. It was on and off keyed using an unmodulated carrier designed to be sent my human operators. There are variations between the length of the elements, the space between the elements, the space between letters and words. This is more a language than code, experienced operators did not hear letters, they heard words. Speeds up to and past 60 wpm were not unheard of. And there were no machines up until recently that could compete with the accuracy of a human operator.
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> There are variations between the length of the elements, the space between the elements, the space between letters and words.
This does not make it analog.
If it did, then we would say that stuff piped down an RS232 cable is analog, but it isn't.
--
BMO
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This does not make it analog.
right, it's a self-clocking digital signal. But it's quinary, not binary, as the symbol space, the letter space, and the word space are all significant (as well as dot and dash, of course).
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Morse is the orginal digital system, being sent with the fingers.
Counting -- with natural numbers -- is the original digital system, being sent with with our 10 digits.
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For these people, telegram still remains the only digital communication available.
Is this accurate? I don't know much about telegraphs, but I'm pretty sure they're analog machines.
well these telegrams as I understand it are not morsed over or any shit like that anyways. it just means you send the message - and it's moved electronically somewhere and printed out and someone delivers the message somehow. it pretty much depends just on what you call such a service now.
Re: Another industry killed by the Internet (Score:2)
Yep, with old people the old style digital bits are somehow better than the newer ones
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Yep, with old people the old style digital bits are somehow better than the newer ones
He didn't say anything about the people. Sending a telegram took a fair bit more effort than sending a tweet or an email. I'd say that something like a telegram or a hand written letter does have more value than a quick modern digital communication, if only because it takes more effort to send.
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Indeed, I was trained as a wireless operator after high school. I certified in morse code, sending and receiving 20wpm. There was some effort in sending the telegram, but even calculating how much it was going to cost. A good operator could save the sender money by combining words and using shorthand expressions.
When I was unable to attend either of my brother's weddings, I sent telegrams to congradulate them. Aside from the cost, they represent a level of effort which email or a telephone call just can
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As an old person let me tell you... Telegrams are pretty much the exact opposite of digital bits. They are analog.
Well, I guess they're not "opposite" really but they're certainly not digital (though they could be made that way). I'm not suggesting you blindly follow your elders or anything but I'm suggesting that you may not know as much as you think you do.
dots and dashes = ones and zeroes = binary = digit (Score:3, Insightful)
Analog: composed of continuously variable values
Digital: composed of discreet values
Binary: composed of two possible values
Since traditional telegraphs consist of only dots and dashes, they are digital, and binary. If they were analog, they would include "dot and a half", with infinite valid values between dot and dash.
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Yeah, I was finding this to add to it actually. I didn't think my response was clear or necessarily correct which made me scroll up to find it. It's a bit of a difficult thing to classify it, I gave a link below that gave a pretty decent description of it. One of the curious things is that the "off" status isn't used. There is long on and short on (with at least Morse, there may be other types). It's binary in nature which is what I should have said. Binary, by itself, doesn't (I'm pretty sure but may be mi
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Actually AFAIK they were sent using 5-bit Baudot code since around the '20s. Could be off by a decade or two.
Hand-sent-and-received Morse went out a while back.
binary is a subset of digital, by definition (Score:5, Informative)
The defining distinction between digital and analog is that analog can represent a continuous range, whereas digital can only represent specific values. A phonograph, for example, can represent an infinite range of values between silence and full volume. A CD, on the other hand, can only encode certain volumes, not any in between. That's what makes a phonograph analog and a CD digital. Therefore, binary is BY DEFINITION digital - it uses just two values, not an infinite range
That's good and bad for both. With digital, you get back EXACTLY what you debt, with no degradation. With analog, you can receive a signal even if it can't be received perfectly, because it can receive 0.46 when its not possible to distinguish between 0 and 1.
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With digital, you get back EXACTLY what you debt, with no degradation. With analog, you can receive a signal even if it can't be received perfectly, because it can receive 0.46 when its not possible to distinguish between 0 and 1.
It's the other way round. With digital, the signal can withstand significant degradation. If noise mangles your 0 to 0.4 and your one to 0.6, you can still distinguish between the two and get back a perfect representation of the input signal. With analog, any noise will degrade the signal irreversibly. A signal of 0.46 plus or minus 0.4 in noise is mangled beyond recognition.
Luckily, the human ear and brain are pretty good at extracting meaning from noisy signals, so even a bad phone connection can still be
Re:dots and dashes = ones and zeroes = binary = di (Score:5, Informative)
Since traditional telegraphs consist of only dots and dashes, they are digital, and binary.
Actually no. Silences are meaningful in morse, so it's ternary, not binary.
Re:dots and dashes = ones and zeroes = binary = di (Score:4, Informative)
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I thought telegrams were transmitted using morse code. That's pretty digital. Trinary bits rather than binary but digital nonetheless.
The analogue technology superceded telegrams because it could do voice; telephones are only digital again because computers can encode/decode the digital signals a fuck of a lot quicker than a telegram operator.
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That makes sense. As mentioned in other comments, I've always considered it to be analog but, with further inspection, it appears to be digital. I've been wrong! On the internet! NO!!! *chuckles* I'm still a bit confused but someone cleared it up a bit for me. It seems the duration and the interpretation doesn't matter for this.
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I thought telegrams were transmitted using morse code
Sure, a century ago they were sent using telegraph wires, but a 'telegram' doesn't mean 'morse code.'
When Roger O. Thornhill sends a telegram in North by Northwest it would have gone by telex machine. The 'Congratulations!' telegrams we sent and received in my youth were sent by telex.
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I'm old enough to remember when telegrams were still used in the US, mostly at memorial services. They were considered a classy way of someone unable to attend to send their regards for the deceased; the telegrams would be laid out on a table.
Somehow I don't think email, tweets or e-whatever would be an effective replacement.
I don't know - a table covered with smartphones playing videos of people who could not come crying might be cool.
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Yup, I'm old enough to remember riding in Grandfather's car into town to send a telegram and watch the operator key it. I'm generally in favour of mod cons but do not subscribe to throwing something useful away because it's not modern.
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They had me at "More than 500 million people are still without access to a phone or Internet. For these people, telegram still remains the only digital communication available." So they do not have an internet cafe down the road, but a telegraph office instead?
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As it mentions, telegraph seems to be a legal correspondence much like faxes are still considered legal correspondence in the US over e-mail or any other type of electronic document exchange. Try sending an e-mail to your local court house even with a digital certificate, they still by-and-large only accept in-person, fax or registered mail. Some countries in Europe have digital certificates for it's citizens which is considered equal to a signature, not so much in the US.
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"More than 500 million people are still without access to a phone or Internet."
How will they use the XBox One??!?
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For no small number, there isn't a road to have an internet cafe anywhere "down".
Have you never lived in the third world?
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"This will probably be the last telegram ever sent in the world. However, telegrams are still relevant in this vast country"
Probably isn't news.
Well, it could be an opportunity for a ground breaking new "Email via Hand Delivery" patent!
Also, they could train delivery persons to "sing" the email to the recipient, thus helping employ some of the people that just "couldn't make it" in Bollywood...
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In this case the actual story is itself incorrect. Still, it wouldn't have been too difficult to research this one:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=telegrams [lmgtfy.com]
Slash is a news aggregator, and it's best to assume that summaries submitted by the the public will be of a pretty low standard. A Slashdot editor only has two things to do before posting a story.
1) Confirm the subject matter is kind of relevant and/or will generate some activity
2) Check for illegal or offensive content (including clicking the links).
No need to fac