Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Dots and Dashes Make Way for Dot Com
byOn Jan. 27, Western Union transmitted its last telegram. While most considered the 162-year-old dots-and-dashes technology quaint, it easily leads the list as the communication medium that had the most dramatic impact on society.
The Internet, the printing press and radio all changed culture in important ways; but they all grew out of previous communication forms. The electromagnetic telegraph was fundamentally different from anything that came before. Once telegraph wires came to town, the community was connected to the world. Messages from across the nation, and eventually around the world, could be sent and received almost instantly. The results of elections, military battles and the Wright brothers’ flight at Kitty Hawk were known within hours, rather than weeks.
The sentimental aren’t completely out of luck. Companies like American Telegraph will continue to hand deliver important messages and congratulatory notes.
And while the largest telegraph system the word is gone, the technology isn’t. Encoding information on electro-magnetic waves, which is the basis for the telegram, is also the underlying technology for the telephone, radio and the Internet.
