15 July 2013 :: 163 year old Telegram service is closed forever. Started in 1850 on an experimental basis between Koklata and Diamond Harbour, it was opened for use by the British East India Company the following year. In 1854, the service was made available to the public.
It was such an important mode of communication in those days that revolutionaries fighting for the country’s independence used to cut the telegram lines to stop the British from communicating.
Old timers recall that receiving a telegram would be an event itself and the messages were normally opened with a sense of trepidation as people feared for the welfare of their near and dear ones.
For jawans and armed forces seeking leave or waiting for transfer or joining reports, it was a quick and handy mode of communication.
Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages without the physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus semaphore is a method of telegraphy whereas pigeon post is not.
Telegraphy requires that the method used for encoding the message be known to both sender and receiver. Such methods are designed according to the limits of the signalling medium used. The use of smoke signals, beacons, reflected light signals, and flag semaphore signals are early examples.
Telegraphy systems operated in Europe from as early as 1792 in the form of semaphore lines, or optical telegraphs, that sent messages to a distant observer through line-of-sight signals. In 1837, American artist-turned inventor Samuel F. B. Morse conducted the first successful experiment with an electrical recording telegraph.
The first UK public telegraph carrier, the Electric Telegraph Company, originated in 1846.
