Belgium Ends 19th-Century Telegram Service (bbc.com) 52
Belgium's telegram service is about to stop. From a report: One hundred and seventy-one years after the first electrical message was transmitted down a line running alongside the railway between Brussels and Antwerp the final dispatch will be sent and received on 29 December. The fact that this 19th-Century technology is still up and running in the age of Instagram and Snapchat may seem rather odd -- especially when you consider that the UK, which invented the telegram in the 1830s, abandoned it as long ago as 1982. The United States followed suit in 2006 and even India, which had been by far the world's biggest market for the telegram, finally closed its system down in 2013.
Next we'll hear that telex is dropped (Score:2)
Stop (Score:2)
Re:Stop (Score:5, Interesting)
You know this sounds like a fun project for kids with a Raspberry PI. Program the PI to receive Morse code, translate it to the actual text. Send it over the internet via SSH to an end point, where it would decode the message, and play the Morse Code back onto a ticker tape writer. All the nostalgia without having dedicated cable.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
As somebody living in Belgium and having used telegram service, morse has nothing to do with it
Yeah - Every time one of these 'death of telegrams' stories appear on Slashdot people always assume it means morse-code telegrams, which is of course wrong.
Teletypes were in use for telegrams for over 100 years.
Re: (Score:2)
Is there no length that Trump will not go to, to destroy all that we love and cherish? #MTTA (Make Telegraphs Tap Again)
You have it wrong, with NN going away I think "Make America Great Again" involves bringing back the telegraph :)
Sam Morse's son's comment on the telegraph (Score:5, Insightful)
Da-da did-it.
But seriously, it is good to remember that the telegraph's current loop (with ground/earth return) was used for Teletypes; paper tape punched by these was easily stored or repeated to multiple recipients over radio or other links; Teletypes themselves were easily interfaced to early computers, and begat RS-232 and all today's serial I/O. Dig deep into any modern computer and in a way, it still talks click-clack telegraphy.
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Petzold wrote a neat book called 'code' that spends a lot of time on telegraphs and how the relays they used became the transistors in modern computers.
Re:Sam Morse's son's comment on the telegraph (Score:4, Insightful)
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Those were the days.
Re:Sam Morse's son's comment on the telegraph (Score:4)
You appear to have absolutely no understanding of what descended from means, as it means exactly what you claim it doesn't. Either that or you are too dumb to know the difference between a teleGRAM (the message itself) and teleGRAPHY (the method used to send the message). It doesn't have anything to do with 'an improved solution to a problem', it has to do with extending an EXISTING thing to a new purpose.
The telegraph was sending DIGITAL signals SERIALLY over a wire using a CODE. Are you really going to claim that does not still happen in modern computers? Telegraph using Morse Code led to teletype using Baudot code. Teletype using Baudot code led to RS-232 using ASCII led to Ethernet and so on. Of course over time the electrical characteristics of the connections changed, but the exact same concepts are still in place.
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Haha who cares about old tech haha granpa go shit in diapers haha
Good Lord, is that Oscar Wilde posting on slashdot?
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There goes the planet. (Score:1)
How will we coordinate our counter-offensive with the rest of the world now?
Used for legal reasons (Score:3)
When I was young, telegrams were used for "instant" communication regards legal matters.
It had guaranteed delivery, proof when it was sent and a chain of custody similar to "registered mail" in the US, I don't know of any products in the EU/Belgium that have similar guarantees, hence the need for telegrams.
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I don't know of any products in the EU/Belgium that have similar guarantees, hence the need for telegrams.
Registered mail exists in pretty much every country that has a mail system.
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Registered mail isn't instant. In the US we have a similar problem with fax - it only hangs around because it's viewed as an acceptable way to send legal documents.
Fake News Detected (Score:5, Informative)
"The United States followed suit in 2006..."
While in 2006 Western Union stopped handling telegrams, the business was sold not discontinued.
There are two companies providing this service. International Telegram took over the Western Union Service, but American Telegram is another company in the business.
The official time stamp on a telegram is valid in court for purposes of contract law regardless of delivery method, in fact cancelling time share agreements is a common use of telegrams.
Like paging, the telegram business is healthy but smaller than it once was. The service has evolved significantly with classic and contemporary entry and delivery methods.
Telegrams can be delivered in one or more methods:
- Traditional Hand Delivery
- Postal Delivery
- Telephone (an operator calls and reads the telegram to you)
- Fax (the telegram is transmitted to your fax machine).
- Email: Yes, even email delivery of a telegram is available. Telegrams, even if delivered by email are kept on file by the telegraph (Morse isn't used BTW) for legal verification purposes.
Re: (Score:1)
Yeah, no kidding ... I know a bunch of people who still carry pagers.
People say "why don't you just use a cell phone", but pagers work pretty much all the time, every time, and will work in places you can't get cellular. I've known teams who have switched entirely to smart phone apps, and pretty much every one has missed oodles of calls and missed SLAs.
The reason these things have lasted as long as they have is they work, and they s
Not odd at all ... (Score:1)
See, unlike Instagram and Snapchat, 19th century technology solved the problem it needed to, and ran reliably for decades.
In 2-5 years, I bet one or both of Snapchat and Instagram will not exist either.
All you whiny fucking millennials may think you're the pinnacle of civilization, but mostly you're about pointless toys and distractions to feed your shallow, narcissistic lives ... I me
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In 2-5 years, I bet one or both of Snapchat and Instagram will not exist either.
I'll take that bet for any amount, but you won't put up.
I think you're too busy bitching about millennials to realize how big these products have gotten. They might not be the hottest thing on the block in 5 years, but they'll exist. See Sears and Myspace.
"the UK, which invented the telegram in the 1830s" (Score:2)
Still alive (Score:4, Informative)
That's funny, because telegrams are still alive [correos.es] in Spain. They still charge per words.
As mentioned in previous comments, telegrams are still alive in many parts of the world (including the US, despite what's in the article) and they are used for legal reasons, in cases in which registered delivery is required.
Alas we will just revert to optical semaphores (Score:2)
mister gower (Score:2)
cables you need cash STOP my office instructed to advance you up to 25000 dollars STOP hee haw and merry christmas sam wainwright
Oscar Wilde, an inspiration to us all (Score:2)
Or, I imagine, Ken Thompson when he developed "ed" [wikipedia.org].
From TFA:
No-one could rival Oscar Wilde for brevity. He is said to have once asked his publisher how a book was doing, by telegraphing simply "?". To which the publisher replied enigmatically "!"
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“Brevity" said Shakespeare, "is the soul of wit.” (Hamlet)
Lamented (Score:2)
As they say: (Score:2)
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I think he got a dare. And lost. And then had to do this.
last chance? (Score:2)
I wish I could be there to send or receive one of the last telegrams.
The last message... (Score:2)
Breaks my workflow (Score:1)
Last post (Score:2)
BELGIUM STOP