Telegram: nineteenth century service ends in Belgium

The last clarion name of the Large, an announcement of the first successful flight and The United States’s entry into World Struggle One – on bigger than one event the telegram has been at the coronary heart of historic previous.

Now it is coming to a closing live, in Belgium – one of many last countries to make exhaust of the messaging service.

The closing message will doubtless be delivered on December 29, 171 years after the nation’s first electric telegram become despatched down a line laid alongside the railway linking Brussels and Antwerp.

« If you happen to quiz teenagers [about it], they lift out no longer know what a telegram is, » says Jack Hamande, an executive board member at the Belgian Institute for Postal Products and services and Telecommunications (BIPT).

« People fancy to win an instantaneous response, which is no longer the case with a telegram. »

The decline of the telegram has been swift in a world saturated by phone networks, the procure and fast messaging products and services comparable to Whatsapp, Viber, Fb Messenger and even Telegram – an app named after its predecessor which launched in 2013.

As honest honest nowadays because the Eighties, bigger than 1.5 million telegrams were despatched and bought per yr in Belgium.

But fewer than 9,000 were dispatched within the first 11 months of this yr, marking a 20 percent decline from 2016.

If you happen to quiz teenagers [about it], they lift out no longer know what a telegram is.

Jack Hamande

And with charges rising to 16 euro ($19) for a 20-observe message, the telegram has no longer been in a position to compete with nowadays’s technology.

No longer a necessity

Proximus, a telecommunications firm, managed the telegram service in Belgium, the place the authorities has dominated that the network now no longer constitutes a public service.

The telegram has been kept alive by the customized of a handful of industry potentialities.

« It is far basically 10 potentialities the utilization of the telegram in Belgium nowadays … in finance, judicial products and services and insurance protection, » says Hamande.

« Many of the contemporary users of telegram will shift to registered mail … we stare no motive to drive the firm to retain this service. »

The ‘Zimmermann Telegram’ published Germany had offered Mexico territory within the US, prompting US President Woodrow Wilson to determine the US in World Struggle One [Jennifer McDermott/AP Photo]

Whereas a perceived lack of bustle stalled the telegram’s repute in non-public communications, dispositions in digital security win hastened the technology’s lead to the industry world.

The emergence of digitally registered mail, in declare, has intended the telegram now no longer occupies a distinct segment in phrases of its authorized validity in Belgium and in loads of locations.

In conserving with David Hay, head of heritage and archives at BT (beforehand British Telecom), telegrams were traditionally « aged as proof because they were date stamped mechanically ».

« Ideal within the previous few years win issues comparable to emails been accredited as authorized proof, » he says.

Varied historic previous, blended messages

Britain, the place the telegram become invented within the 1830s, switched off its network bigger than a decade ago. Other countries adopted suit since, comparable to the united states in 2006, and India in 2013.

« After a protracted time of goal, staunch service, it is time for the telegram to give methodology to contemporary method of verbal exchange, » Proximus – Belgium’s largest mobile telecommunications firm – announced on its web page on December 12.

But in its heyday, the telegram unfold within the direction of the field, shaping the methodology governments, businesses and folks interacted.

In 1985, 60 million telegrams were being despatched and bought a yr in India from forty five,000 locations of work [File: Danish Siddiqui/Reuters]

« It become a global technology, within the nineteenth century and for the first share of the 20th century, it become the important telecommunications technology, » says BT’s Hay.

« It become wholly innovative, it diminished the time it took to send messages from one live of the field to the loads of from months to hours and later minutes. »

The technology transformed events from weddings to wars.

It had an even bigger affect on the field in phrases of exchange, governance and indeed society at the time than the procure has nowadays.

David Hay

« Telegrams [were sent] to families of those that were lacking or killed, » says Hay.

« If you happen to saw a messenger bobbing up the garden course then invariably it become going to be sinful news all over wartime. »

It become moreover aged for moments of event.

In Britain, folks despatched congratulatory notes to couples getting married and contemporary of us.

« They [operators] presented greetings telegrams, which were a lot extra colourful, in space of the drab brown make that become aged for same outdated telegrams, » says Hay.

« They were delivered in gold envelopes in notify that folk would recognise they weren’t sinful news. »

At the contemporary time, in Belgium and in loads of locations, the telegram is a relic.

« It had an even bigger affect on the field in phrases of exchange, governance and indeed society at the time than the procure has nowadays, » says Hay.

« The Victorians were astonished by the technology … They known as it the electric fluid, and the wonder of the age. »