why are you asking about it? It is long dead,” says P.N. Srivastava when asked about telegram, a service that was officially closed down on 14 July 2013. On that last day, people had thronged telegraph centres across India to send messages. The event was organised to bid a ceremonious goodbye to a 162-year-old service that was the only means of communication for decades for many.
In New Delhi, the telegram counter at the Central Telegraph Office in Janpath closed at 11.45pm and the last message was booked by Ashwani Mishra, who sent it to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
“I am 162 years old. Unfortunately my end has come: Telegram” was one of the messages sent on the last day of the service.
The revenue collected on that day was Rs.68,837 through 2,197 bookings, of which billing through computers accounted for 1,329 while 91 bookings were made over telephone, according to information available with the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), the state-run telecom operator that ran the erstwhile service.
Srivastava, a Kanpur resident and a nonagenarian who retired in 1982 as the head of the northern division of the telegraph department, now talks to his granddaughter staying in New Delhi over a mobile phone.
“With all these new technologies, why would we need a telegram service now? It had to be closed down,” he reflects.
As a senior official from BSNL, who does not want to be named, puts it, “From over a 100,000 telegrams per day in its heyday to a meagre 10-15 per day towards the end, the service had lost its relevance in the modern times.”
At the start
“What hath God wrought?,” was the first telegram message sent by Samuel Finley Breese Morse from Washington, D.C., to his business partner Alfred Vail in Baltimore on 24 May 1844. It was the beginning of a new era of communication via dots and dashes. Each alphabet was represented by a set of dots and dashes, and was transmitted electronically via wires to long-distance destinations.
The word telegram comes from Greek language where ‘tele’ means distance and ‘gram’ means a letter. It was a written message, which used to be transmitted through an electronic device and carried along wires while the text was written or printed at the receiving end.
India’s telegram service began in 1850, when the first telegram was sent from the eastern city of Calcutta (now Kolkata) to Diamond Harbour, both in West Bengal. This system was introduced to the public in 1854 and was a lifeline for many—for good news and the bad one—till the early 1990s when it lost ground to fax machine, email and telephone.
The Indian Telegraph Act was introduced in 1885.
During its peak days in 1980s, there were over 45,000 telegraph offices across the country, with lakhs of employees sending millions of telegrams a day.
At the time of Independence, the service was managed by the Indian Posts and Telegraph Department. A 100 years after the Act was introduced, telegraph and post offices were separated under the Department of Telecommunications and the Department of Posts, respectively.
In 2000, BSNL was hived off as a separate unit from the Department of Telecommunications, which managed the telegram service till the end.
Although telegram started as a Morse code service, it evolved subsequently and ended its era with a Web-based telegraph mailing service, which used emails to instantly convey messages to the other end.
In 1960s, telegraph sounder was used to send telegrams where operators used Morse code. Then teleprinters were introduced and operators could send more telegrams within a shorter time period. Telegrams were also used by armed and military forces to a great extent, according to Srivastava.
The journey downhill
The service started declining when landlines flourished in the 1990s and now, with easy access to the Internet which ensures that one can talk or send message at an unbelievable speed, the telegram service had to be stopped.
R.K. Upadhayay, chairman and managing director of the BSNL in 2013 when the telegram service was finally stopped, says that more than the financial losses or the expenditure for maintaining the service, it had to be stopped keeping in mind the modern times where such a service has no relevance. Upadhayay retired in June 2014.
In New Delhi, the telegram counter at the Central Telegraph Office in Janpath closed at 11.45pm and the last message was booked by Ashwani Mishra, who sent it to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
“I am 162 years old. Unfortunately my end has come: Telegram” was one of the messages sent on the last day of the service.
The revenue collected on that day was Rs.68,837 through 2,197 bookings, of which billing through computers accounted for 1,329 while 91 bookings were made over telephone, according to information available with the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), the state-run telecom operator that ran the erstwhile service.
Srivastava, a Kanpur resident and a nonagenarian who retired in 1982 as the head of the northern division of the telegraph department, now talks to his granddaughter staying in New Delhi over a mobile phone.
“With all these new technologies, why would we need a telegram service now? It had to be closed down,” he reflects.
As a senior official from BSNL, who does not want to be named, puts it, “From over a 100,000 telegrams per day in its heyday to a meagre 10-15 per day towards the end, the service had lost its relevance in the modern times.”
At the start
“What hath God wrought?,” was the first telegram message sent by Samuel Finley Breese Morse from Washington, D.C., to his business partner Alfred Vail in Baltimore on 24 May 1844. It was the beginning of a new era of communication via dots and dashes. Each alphabet was represented by a set of dots and dashes, and was transmitted electronically via wires to long-distance destinations.
The word telegram comes from Greek language where ‘tele’ means distance and ‘gram’ means a letter. It was a written message, which used to be transmitted through an electronic device and carried along wires while the text was written or printed at the receiving end.
India’s telegram service began in 1850, when the first telegram was sent from the eastern city of Calcutta (now Kolkata) to Diamond Harbour, both in West Bengal. This system was introduced to the public in 1854 and was a lifeline for many—for good news and the bad one—till the early 1990s when it lost ground to fax machine, email and telephone.
The Indian Telegraph Act was introduced in 1885.
During its peak days in 1980s, there were over 45,000 telegraph offices across the country, with lakhs of employees sending millions of telegrams a day.
At the time of Independence, the service was managed by the Indian Posts and Telegraph Department. A 100 years after the Act was introduced, telegraph and post offices were separated under the Department of Telecommunications and the Department of Posts, respectively.
In 2000, BSNL was hived off as a separate unit from the Department of Telecommunications, which managed the telegram service till the end.
Although telegram started as a Morse code service, it evolved subsequently and ended its era with a Web-based telegraph mailing service, which used emails to instantly convey messages to the other end.
In 1960s, telegraph sounder was used to send telegrams where operators used Morse code. Then teleprinters were introduced and operators could send more telegrams within a shorter time period. Telegrams were also used by armed and military forces to a great extent, according to Srivastava.
The journey downhill
The service started declining when landlines flourished in the 1990s and now, with easy access to the Internet which ensures that one can talk or send message at an unbelievable speed, the telegram service had to be stopped.
R.K. Upadhayay, chairman and managing director of the BSNL in 2013 when the telegram service was finally stopped, says that more than the financial losses or the expenditure for maintaining the service, it had to be stopped keeping in mind the modern times where such a service has no relevance. Upadhayay retired in June 2014.
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