Telegrams no more

This week, we say goodbye to an old friend. Not a person. Rather a thing. After 145 years, Western Union has quietly stopped sending telegrams.

If you visit the company's web site and click on "Telegrams" in the left-side navigation bar, you're taken to a page that says it all. The message reads and we quote:
"Effective January 27, 2006, Western Union will discontinue all Telegram and Commercial Messaging services. We regret any inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you for your loyal patronage. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact a customer service representative."

According to an article by LifeSciences dot com, Western Union goes back to 1851 as the Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company. In 1856 it became the Western Union Telegraph Company after acquisition of competing
telegraph systems. By 1861, during the Civil War, it had created a coast-to-coast network of lines.

So, why has the Telegram gone the way of hieroglyphics, smoke signals and other early means of messaging? Blame it on phones and the Internet. The decline of telegram use goes back at least to the 1980s. That's when long-distance telephone service became cheap enough to offer a viable
alternative in many, if not most cases. Faxes didn't help.
E-mail was the final nail in the Telegram's coffin.

But the company behind the telegram is still with us. LifeSciences says that years ago, Western Union refocused its main business to money transfers for consumers and businesses. Revenues are now $3 billion annually. It's now called Western Union Financial Services, Inc. and is a
subsidiary of First Data Corp.

The world's first telegram was sent on May 24, 1844 by inventor Samuel F.B. Morse. The message, "What hath God wrought," was transmitted from Washington to Baltimore.

And, in a crude way, the telegraph was a precursor to the Internet in that it allowed rapid communication, for the first time, across great distances.

Now the Telegram is a relic of a by-gone past and it looks as if the Morse code may not be to far behind.

Sources: AR Newsline, Western Union, LifeSciences, other published reports

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