Telegraphy

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"Telegraph" and "Telegram" redirect here. For other uses, see Telegraph (disambiguation) and
Telegram (disambiguation).
This article is about telegraphy in general. For the Electrical telegraph, see Electrical
telegraph.

Claude Chappe's optical telegraph on the Litermont near Nalbach, Germany

Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of written messages without physical transport of

letters. It is a compound term formed from the Greek words tele (τηλε) = far and graphein
(γραφειν) = write. Radiotelegraphy or wireless telegraphy transmits messages using radio.
Telegraphy includes recent forms of data transmission such as fax, email, telephone networks
and computer networks in general.[citation needed]

Contents
[hide]
• 1 Terminology
• 2 Optical telegraph

• 3 Electrical telegraphs

o 3.1 Morse telegraph

 o 3.2 Oceanic telegraph cables

• 4 Wireless telegraphy

• 5 Telegraphic improvements

• 6 Telex

o 6.1 Operation and applications

o 6.2 Teletypewriter eXchange

o 6.3 International Record Carriers

• 7 Arrival of the Internet

• 8 E-mail displaces telegraphy

• 9 Worldwide discontinuance of telegrams

• 10 Social implications

• 11 Names of periodicals

• 12 See also

• 13 References

• 14 Further reading

• 15 External links

[edit] Terminology
A telegraph is a device for transmitting and receiving messages over long distances, i.e., for
telegraphy. The word telegraph alone now generally refers to an electrical telegraph. Wireless
telegraphy is also known as "CW", for continuous wave (a carrier modulated by on-off keying),
as opposed to the earlier radio technique of using a spark gap.[citation needed]

A telegraph message sent by an electrical telegraph operator (or telegrapher) using Morse code,
or a printing telegraph operator using plain text was known as a telegram or cablegram, often
shortened to a cable or a wire message. Later, a telegram sent by a Telex network, a switched
network of teleprinters similar to a telephone network, was known as a Telex message.

Before long distance telephone services were readily available or affordable, telegram services
were very popular and the only way to convey information speedily over very long distances.
Telegrams were often used to confirm business dealings and were commonly used to create
binding legal documents for business dealings.[1]
A wire picture or wire photo was a newspaper picture that was sent from a remote location by a
facsimile telegraph. The teleostereograph machine, a forerunner to the modern electronic fax,
was developed by AT&T's Bell Labs in the 1920s; however the first commercial use of image
facsimile telegraph devices date back to the 1800s.

[edit] Optical telegraph

Main articles: Semaphore line (visual telegraphy using signal arms or shutters), Flag
semaphore (using hand-held flags), Signal lamp (visual naval communications) and
Heliograph (visual communications using reflected sunlight)

Construction schematic of a Prussian optical telegraph (or semaphore) tower, C. 1835

The first telegraphs came in the form of optical telegraphs, including the use of smoke signals,
beacons or reflected light, which have existed since ancient times. A semaphore network
invented by Claude Chappe operated in France from 1792 through 1846.[2] It helped Napoleon
enough to be widely imitated in Europe and the U.S. The Prussian system was put into effect in
the 1830s. The last commercial semaphore link ceased operation in Sweden in 1880.
Semaphores were able to convey information more precisely than smoke signals and beacons,
and consumed no fuel. Messages could be sent at much greater speed than post riders and could
serve entire regions. However, like beacons, smoke and reflected light signals they were highly
dependent on good weather and daylight to work (practical electrical lighting was not available
until about 1880). They required operators and towers every 30 km (20 mi), and could only
accommodate about two words per minute. This was useful to governments, but too expensive
for most commercial uses other than commodity price information. Electric telegraphs were to
reduce the cost of sending a message thirtyfold compared to semaphores, and could be utilized
non-stop, 24 hours per day, independent of the weather or daylight.

Elevated locations where optical telegraphs were placed for maximum visibility were renamed to
Telegraph Hill, such as Telegraph Hill, San Francisco, and Telegraph Hill in the PNC Bank Arts
Center in New Jersey.

[edit] Electrical telegraphs

Main article: Electrical telegraph

One very early experiment in electrical telegraphy was an electrochemical telegraph created by
the German physician, anatomist and inventor Samuel Thomas von Sömmering in 1809, based
on an earlier, less robust design of 1804 by Catalan polymath and scientist Francisco Salvá i
Campillo.[3] Both their designs employed multiple wires (up to 35) in order to visually represent
most Latin letters and numerals. Thus, messages could be conveyed electrically up to a few
kilometers (in von Sömmering's design), with each of the telegraph receiver's wires immersed in
a separate glass tube of acid. As an electrical current was applied by the sender representing each
digit of a message, it would at the recipient's end electrolyse the acid in its corresponding tube,
releasing a stream of hydrogen bubbles next to its associated letter or numeral. The telegraph
receiver's operator would visually observe the bubbles and could then record the transmitted
message, albeit at a very low baud rate.[3]

One of the earliest electromagnetic telegraph designs was created by Baron Schilling in 1832.
[citation needed]

Carl Friedrich Gauss and Wilhelm Weber built and first used for regular communication the
electromagnetic telegraph in 1833 in Göttingen.[citation needed] The first commercial electrical
telegraph was constructed by Sir William Fothergill Cooke and Sir Charles Wheatstone and
entered use on the Great Western Railway in Britain. It ran for 13 miles (21 km) from
Paddington station to West Drayton and came into operation on 9 July 1839.[4] It was patented in
the United Kingdom in 1837. In 1843 Scottish inventor Alexander Bain invented a device that
could be considered the first facsimile machine. He called his invention a "recording telegraph".
Bain's telegraph was able to transmit images by electrical wires. In 1855 an Italian abbot,
Giovanni Caselli, also created an electric telegraph that could transmit images. Caselli called his
invention "Pantelegraph". Pantelegraph was successfully tested and approved for a telegraph line
between Paris and Lyon.

[edit] Morse telegraph

A Morse key

An electrical telegraph was independently developed and patented in the United States in 1837
by Samuel F. B. Morse. His assistant, Alfred Vail, developed the Morse code signaling alphabet
with Morse. America's first telegram was sent by Morse on 6 January 1838, across two miles
(3 km) of wire at Speedwell Ironworks near Morristown, New Jersey. The message read "A
patient waiter is no loser." On 24 May 1844, he sent the message "What hath God wrought"
(quoting Numbers 23:23) from the Old Supreme Court Chamber in the Capitol in Washington to
the old Mt. Clare Depot in Baltimore. This message was chosen by Annie Ellsworth of Lafayette,
Indiana,[5] the daughter of Patent Commissioner Henry Leavitt Ellsworth. The Morse/Vail
telegraph was quickly deployed in the following two decades; the overland telegraph connected
the west coast of the continent to the east coast by 24 October 1861, bringing an end to the Pony
Express.

The famous telegram sent by Samuel F. B. Morse from the Capitol in Washington to Alfred Vail
in Baltimore in 1844: "What hath God wrought"

[edit] Oceanic telegraph cables

The first commercially successful transatlantic telegraph cable was successfully completed on 18
July 1866. Earlier transatlantic submarine cables installations were attempted in 1857, 1858 and
1865. The 1857 cable only operated intermittently for a few days or weeks before it failed. The
study of underwater telegraph cables accelerated interest in mathematical analysis of very long
transmission lines. The telegraph lines from Britain to India were connected in 1870 (those
several companies combined to form the Eastern Telegraph Company in 1872).
Major telegraph lines in 1891

Australia was first linked to the rest of the world in October 1872 by a submarine telegraph cable
at Darwin.[6] This brought news reportage from the rest of the world.[7]

Further advancements in telegraph technology occurred in the early 1870s, when Thomas Edison
devised a full duplex two-way telegraph and then doubled its capacity with the invention of
quadruplex telegraphy in 1874.[8] Edison filed for a U.S. patent on the duplex telegraph on 1
September 1874 and received U.S. Patent 480,567 on 9 August 1892.

The telegraph across the Pacific was completed in 1902, finally encircling the world.

[edit] Wireless telegraphy

Main article: Wireless telegraphy

Nikola Tesla and other scientists and inventors showed the usefulness of wireless telegraphy,
radiotelegraphy, or radio, beginning in the 1890s. Alexander Stepanovich Popov demonstrated to
the public his wireless radio receiver, which was also used as a lightning detector, on 7 May
1895. before a group of reporters on a stormy August evening in 1895 he proudly demonstrated
his wireless receiver. It was attached to a long 30 foot pole that he held aloft to maximize the
signal. When asked by one of the reporters if it was a good idea to hold this metal rod in the
middle of a storm he replied that all was well. After being struck (and nearly killed) by a bolt of
lightning he proudly announced to the world that his invention also served as a 'lightning
detector'. This acts in the same way that a burst lip may serve as a punch detector.

Albert Turpain sent and received his first radio signal, using Morse code, in France, up to 25
meters in 1895[9].

Guglielmo Marconi sent and received his first radio signal in Italy up to 6 kilometres in 1896. On
13 May 1897, Marconi, assisted by George Kemp, a Cardiff Post Office engineer, transmitted the
first wireless signals over water to Lavernock (near Penarth in Wales) from Flat Holm.[10] Having
failed to interest the Italian government, the twenty-two year old inventor brought his telegraphy
system to Britain and met William Preece, a Welshman, who was a major figure in the field and
Chief Engineer of the General Post Office. A pair of masts about 34 metres (112 ft) high were
erected, at Lavernock Point and on Flat Holm. The receiving mast at Lavernock Point was a 30-
metre (98 ft) high pole topped with a cylindrical cap of zinc connected to a detector with
insulated copper wire. At Flat Holm the sending equipment included a Ruhmkorff coil with an
eight-cell battery. The first trial on 11 and 12 May failed but on the 13th the mast at Lavernock
was extended to 50 metres (164 ft) and the signals, in Morse code, were received clearly. The
message sent was "ARE YOU READY"; the Morse slip signed by Marconi and Kemp is now in
the National Museum of Wales.

In 1898 Popov accomplished successful experiments of wireless communication between a naval

base and a battleship.
In 1900 the crew of the Russian coast defense ship General-Admiral Graf Apraksin as well as
stranded Finnish fishermen were saved in the Gulf of Finland because of exchange of distress
telegrams between two radiostations, located at Hogland island and inside a Russian naval base
in Kotka. Both stations of wireless telegraphy were built under Popov's instructions.

In 1901, Marconi radiotelegraphed the letter "S" across the Atlantic Ocean from his station in
Poldhu, Cornwall to St. John's, Newfoundland.

Radiotelegraphy proved effective for rescue work in sea disasters by enabling effective
communication between ships and from ship to shore.

[edit] Telegraphic improvements

Teletype machines in World War II

A continuing goal in telegraphy has been to reduce the cost per message by reducing hand-work,
or increasing the sending rate.[citation needed] There were many experiments with moving pointers,
and various electrical encodings. However, most systems were too complicated and unreliable. A
successful expedient to increase the sending rate was the development of telegraphese.

Other research[specify] focused on the multiplexing of telegraph connections. By passing several

simultaneous connections through an existing copper wire, capacity could be upgraded without
the laying of new cable, a process which remained very costly. Several technologies were
developed like Frequency-division multiplexing. Long submarine communications cables
became possible in segments with vacuum tube amplifiers between them.

With the invention of the teletypewriter, telegraphic encoding became fully automated. Early
teletypewriters used the ITA-1 Baudot code, a five-bit code. This yielded only thirty-two codes,
so it was over-defined into two "shifts," "letters" and "figures". An explicit, unshared shift code
prefaced each set of letters and figures.

The airline industry remains one of the last users of teletype and in a few situations still sends
messages over the SITA or AFTN networks. For example, The British Airways operations
computer system (FICO) as of 2004 still used teletype to communicate with other airline
computer systems.[citation needed] The same goes for PARS (Programmed Airline Reservation
System) and IPARS that used a similar shifted six-bit Teletype code, because it requires only
eight bits per character, saving bandwidth and money. A teletype message is often much smaller
than the equivalent EDIFACT or XML message. In recent years as airlines have had access to
improved bandwidth in remote locations, IATA standard XML is replacing Teletype as well as
EDI.

CN Telegraph and Cable office

The first electrical telegraph developed a standard signaling system for telecommunications. The
"mark" state was defined as the powered state of the wire. In this way, it was immediately
apparent when the line itself failed. The moving pointer telegraphs started the pointer's motion
with a "start bit" that pulled the line to the unpowered "space" state. In early Telex machines, the
start bit triggered a wheeled commutator run by a motor with a precise speed (later, digital
electronics). The commutator distributed the bits from the line to a series of relays that would
"capture" the bits. A "stop bit" was then sent at the powered "mark state" to assure that the
commutator would have time to stop, and be ready for the next character. The stop bit triggered
the printing mechanism. Stop bits initially lasted 1.42 baud times (later extended to two as
signaling rates increased), in order to give the mechanism time to finish and stop vibrating.
Hence an ITA-2 Murray code symbol took 1 start, 5 data, and 1.42 stop (total 7.42) baud times to
transmit.[11]

[edit] Telex

A Siemens T100 Telex machine

A late-model British Telecom "Puma" Telex machine of the 1980s

By 1935, message routing was the last great barrier to full automation. Large telegraphy
providers began to develop systems that used telephone-like rotary dialing to connect teletypes.
These machines were called "Telex". Telex machines first performed rotary-telephone-style
pulse dialing for circuit switching, and then sent data by Baudot code. This "type A" Telex
routing functionally automated message routing.

The first wide-coverage Telex network was implemented in Germany during the 1930s.[citation
needed]
The network was used to communicate within the government. the existing international
Telex service that was put in place in November 1956. Canadian Telex customers could connect
with nineteen European countries in addition to eighteen Latin American, African, and trans-
Pacific countries.[12] The major exchanges were located in Montreal (01), Toronto (02), Winnipeg
(03).[13]

In 1958, Western Union Telegraph Company started to build a Telex network in the United
States.[14] This Telex network started as a satellite exchange located in New York City and
expanded to a nationwide network. Western Union chose Siemens & Halske AG,[15] now
Siemens AG, and ITT [16] to supply the exchange equipment, provisioned the exchange trunks via
the Western Union national microwave system and leased the exchange to customer site facilities
from the local telephone company. Teleprinter equipment was originally provided by Siemens &
Halske AG [17] and later by Teletype Corporation.[18] Initial direct International Telex service was
offered by Western Union, via W.U. International, in the summer of 1960 with limited service to
London and Paris.[19]

In 1962, the major exchanges were located in New York City (1), Chicago (2), San Francisco
(3), Kansas City (4) and Atlanta (5).[20] The Telex network expanded by adding the final parent
exchanges cities of Los Angeles (6), Dallas (7), Philadelphia (8) and Boston (9) starting in 1966.

The Telex numbering plan, usually a six-digit number in the United States, was based on the
major exchange where the customer's Telex machine terminated.[21] For example, all Telex
customers that terminated in the New York City exchange were assigned a Telex number that
started with a first digit "1". Further, all Chicago based customers had Telex numbers that started
with a first digit of "2". This numbering plan was maintained by Western Union as the Telex
exchanges proliferated to smaller cities in the United States. The Western Union Telex network
was built on three levels of exchanges.[22] The highest level was made up of the nine exchange
cities previously mentioned. Each of these cities had the dual capability of terminating both
Telex customer lines and setting up trunk connections to multiple distant Telex exchanges. The
second level of exchanges, located in large cities such as Buffalo, Cleveland, Miami, Newark,
Pittsburgh and Seattle, were similar to the highest level of exchanges in capability of terminating
Telex customer lines and setting up trunk connections. However, these second level exchanges
had a smaller customer line capacity and only had trunk circuits to regional cities. The third level
of exchanges, located in small to medium sized cities, could terminate Telex customer lines and
had a single trunk group running to its parent exchange.

Loop signaling was offered in two different configurations for Western Union Telex in the
United States. The first option, sometimes called local or loop service, provided a 60 milliampere
loop circuit from the exchange to the customer teleprinter. The second option, sometimes called
long distance or polar was used when a 60 milliampere connection could not be achieved,
provided a ground return polar circuit using 35 milliamperes on separate send and receive wires.
By the 1970s, and under pressure from the Bell operating companies wanting to modernize their
cable plant and lower the adjacent circuit noise that these Telex circuits sometimes caused,
Western Union migrated customers to a third option called F1F2. This F1F2 option replaced the
DC voltage of the local and long distance options with modems at the exchange and subscriber
ends of the Telex circuit.

Western Union offered connections from Telex to the AT&T Teletypewriter eXchange (TWX)
system in May 1966 via its New York Information Services Computer Center.[23] These
connections were limited to those TWX machines that were equipped with automatic
answerback capability per CCITT standard.

In 1970, Cuba and Pakistan were still running 45.5 baud type A Telex.[citation needed] Telex is still
widely used in some developing countries' bureaucracies, probably because of its reliability and
low cost. The UN asserted at one time that more political entities were reliably available by
Telex than by any other single method.

Around 1960[?], some nations began to use the "figures" Baudot codes to perform "Type B"
Telex routing.[citation needed]

Telex grew around the world very rapidly. Long before automatic telephony was available, most
countries, even in central Africa and Asia, had at least a few high-frequency (shortwave) Telex
links. Often these radio links were first established by government postal and telegraph services
(PTTs). The most common radio standard, CCITT R.44 had error-corrected retransmitting time-
division multiplexing of radio channels. Most impoverished PTTs operated their Telex-on-radio
(TOR) channels non-stop, to get the maximum value from them.

The cost of TOR equipment has continued to fall. Although initially specialised equipment was
required, many amateur radio operators now operate TOR (also known as RTTY) with special
software and inexpensive hardware to adapt computer sound cards to short-wave radios.[citation
needed]
Modern "cablegrams" or "telegrams" actually operate over dedicated Telex networks, using TOR
whenever required.[citation needed]

[edit] Operation and applications

Telex messages are routed by addressing them to a Telex address, e.g. "14910 ERIC S", where
14910 is the subscriber number, ERIC is an abbreviation for the subscriber's name (in this case
Telefonaktiebolaget L.M. Ericsson in Sweden) and S is the country code. Solutions also exist for
the automatic routing of messages to different Telex terminals within a subscriber organization,
by using different terminal identities, e.g. "+T148".

A major advantage of Telex is that the receipt of the message by the recipient could be
confirmed with a high degree of certainty by the "answerback". At the beginning of the message,
the sender would transmit a WRU (Who aRe yoU) code, and the recipient machine would
automatically initiate a response which was usually encoded in a rotating drum with pegs, much
like a music box. The position of the pegs sent an unambiguous identifying code to the sender, so
the sender could verify connection to the correct recipient. The WRU code would also be sent at
the end of the message, so a correct response would confirm that the connection had remained
unbroken during the message transmission. This gave Telex a major advantage over less
verifiable forms of communications such as telephone and fax.

The usual method of operation was that the message would be prepared off-line, using paper
tape. All common Telex machines incorporated a 5-hole paper-tape punch and reader. Once the
paper tape had been prepared, the message could be transmitted in minimum time. Telex billing
was always by connected duration, so minimizing the connected time saved money. However, it
was also possible to connect in "real time", where the sender and the recipient could both type on
the keyboard and these characters would be immediately printed on the distant machine.

Telex could also be used as a rudimentary but functional carrier of information from one IT
system to another, in effect a primitive forerunner of Electronic Data Interchange. The sending
IT system would create an output (e.g., an inventory list) on paper tape using a mutually agreed
format. The tape would be sent by Telex and collected on a corresponding paper tape by the
receiver and this tape could then be read into the receiving IT system.

One use of Telex circuits, in use until the widescale adoption of x.400 and Internet email, was to
facilitate a message handling system, allowing local email systems to exchange messages with
other email and Telex systems via a central routing operation, or switch. One of the largest such
switches was operated by Royal Dutch Shell as recently as 1994, permitting the exchange of
messages between a number of IBM Officevision, Digital Equipment Corporation All-In-One
and Microsoft Mail systems. In addition to permitting email to be sent to Telex addresses, formal
coding conventions adopted in the composition of Telex messages enabled automatic routing of
Telexes to email recipients.

[edit] Teletypewriter eXchange

The Teletypewriter eXchange (TWX) was developed by the Bell System in the United States and
originally ran at 45.45 baud or 60 words per minute, using five level Baudot code. Bell later
developed a second generation of TWX called "four row" that ran at 110 baud, using eight level
ASCII code. The Bell System offered both "3-row" Baudot and "4-row" ASCII TWX service up
to the late 1970s.

TWX used the public switched telephone network. In addition to having separate Area Codes
(510, 610, 710 and 810) for the TWX service, the TWX lines were also set up with a special
Class of Service to prevent connections to and from POTS to TWX and vice versa.

The code/speed conversion between "3-row" Baudot and "4-row" ASCII TWX service was
accomplished using a special Bell "10A/B board" via a live operator. A TWX customer would
place a call to the 10A/B board operator for Baudot - ASCII calls, ASCII - Baudot calls and also
TWX Conference calls. The code / speed conversion was done by a Western Electric unit that
provided this capability. There were multiple code / speed conversion units at each operator
position.

Western Union purchased the TWX system from AT&T in January 1969.[24] The TWX system
and the special area codes (510, 610, 710 and 810) continued right up to 1981 when Western
Union completed the conversion to the Western Union Telex II system. Any remaining "3-row"
Baudot customers were converted to Western Union Telex service during the period 1979 to
1981.

The modem for this service was the Bell 101 dataset, which is the direct ancestor of the Bell 103
modem that launched computer time-sharing. The 101 was revolutionary, because it ran on
ordinary telephone subscriber lines, allowing the Bell System to run TWX along with POTS on a
single public switched telephone network.

[edit] International Record Carriers

Bell's original consent agreement limited it to international dial telephony. The Western Union
Telegraph Company had given up its international telegraphic operation in a 1939 bid to
monopolize U.S. telegraphy by taking over ITT's PTT business. The result was a de-emphasis on
Telex in the U.S. and a "cat's cradle" of international Telex and telegraphy companies. The
Federal Communications Commission refered to these companies as "International Record
Carriers" (IRCs).

• Western Union Telegraph Company developed a subsidiary named Western Union Cable
System. This company later was renamed as Western Union International (WUI) when it
was spun-off by Western Union as an independent company. WUI was purchased by
MCI Communications (MCI) in 1983 and operated as a subsidiary of MCI International.
• ITT's "World Communications" division (later known as ITT World Communications)
was amalgamated from many smaller companies: "Federal Telegraph", "All American
Cables and Radio", "Globe Wireless", and the common carrier division of Mackay
Marine. ITT World Communications was purchased by Western Union in 1987.
 • RCA Communications (later known as RCA Global Communications) had specialized in
global radiotelegraphic connections. In 1986 it was purchased by MCI International.
• Before World War I, the Tropical Radiotelegraph Company (later known as Tropical
Radio Telecommunications, or TRT) put radio telegraphs on ships for its owner, the
United Fruit Company (UFC), to enable them to deliver bananas to the best-paying
markets. Communications expanded to UFC's plantations, and were eventually provided
to local governments. TRT eventually became the national carrier for many small Central
American nations.
• The French Telegraph Cable Company (later known as FTC Communications, or just
FTCC), which was owned by French investors, had always been in the U.S. It laid
undersea cable from the U.S. to France. It was formed by Monsieur Puyer-Quartier.
International telegrams routed via FTCC were routed using the telegraphic routing ID
"PQ", which are the initials of the founder of the company.
• Firestone Rubber developed its own IRC, the "Trans-Liberia Radiotelegraph Company".
[citation needed]
It operated shortwave from Akron, Ohio to the rubber plantations in Liberia.
TL is still based in Akron.

Bell Telex users had to select which IRC to use, and then append the necessary routing digits.
The IRCs converted between TWX and Western Union Telegraph Co. standards.

[edit] Arrival of the Internet

Main article: History of the Internet
See also: E-mail, & See also: ARPANET

Around 1965, DARPA commissioned a study of decentralized switching systems. Some of the
ideas developed in this study provided inspiration for the development of the ARPANET packet
switching research network, which later grew to become the public Internet.

As the PSTN became a digital network, T-carrier "synchronous" networks became commonplace
in the U.S. A T1 line has a "frame" of 193 bits that repeats 8000 times per second. The first bit,
called the "sync" bit, alternates between 1 and 0 to identify the start of the frames. The rest of the
frame provides 8 bits for each of 24 separate voice or data channels. Customarily, a T-1 link is
sent over a balanced twisted pair, isolated with transformers to prevent current flow. Europeans
adopted a similar system (E-1) of 32 channels (with one channel for frame synchronisation).

Later, SONET and SDH were adapted to combine carrier channels into groups that could be sent
over optic fiber. The capacity of an optic fiber is often extended with wavelength division
multiplexing, rather than rerigging new fibre. Rigging several fibres in the same structures as the
first fibre is usually easy and inexpensive, and many fibre installations include unused spare
"dark fibre", "dark wavelengths", and unused parts of the SONET frame, so-called "virtual
channels."
As of 2006, the fastest well-defined communication channel used for telegraphy is the SONET
standard OC-768, which sends about 40 gigabits per second.[dated info]

The theoretical maximum capacity of an optic fiber is more than 1012 bits (one terabit or one
trillion bits) per second[citation needed]. No current (2006) encoding system approaches this theoretical
limit, even with wavelength division multiplexing.

Since the Internet operates over any digital transmission medium, further evolution of
telegraphic technology will be effectively concealed from users.

As of 2007, most telegraphic messages are carried by the Internet in the form of e-mail[citation needed].

In 2002, the Internet was used by Kevin Warwick at the University of Reading to communicate
neural signals, in purely electronic form, telegraphically between the nervous systems of two
humans[25], potentially opening up a new form of communication combining the Internet and
telegraphy.

[edit] E-mail displaces telegraphy

Main article: E-mail

E-mail was first invented for Multics in the late 1960s.[citation needed] At first, e-mail was possible
only between different accounts on the same computer (typically a mainframe). UUCP allowed
different computers to be connected to allow e-mails to be relayed from computer to computer.
With the growth of the Internet, e-mail began to be possible between any two computers with
access to the Internet.

Various private networks like UUNET (founded 1987), the Well (1985), and GEnie (1985) had
e-mail from the 1970s, but subscriptions were quite expensive for an individual, US$25 to
US$50 per month, just for e-mail. Internet use was then largely limited to government, academia
and other government contractors until the net was opened to commercial use in the 1980s.

By the early 1990s, modems made e-mail a viable alternative to Telex systems in a business
environment. But individual e-mail accounts were not widely available until local Internet
service providers were in place, although demand grew rapidly, as e-mail was seen as the
Internet's killer app. The broad user base created by the demand for e-mail smoothed the way for
the rapid acceptance of the World Wide Web in the mid-1990s.

On Monday, 12 July 1999, a final telegram was sent from the National Liberty Ship Memorial,
the SS Jeremiah O'Brien, in San Francisco Bay to President Bill Clinton in the White House.
Officials of Globe Wireless reported that "The message was 95 words, and it took six or eight
minutes to copy it." They then transmitted the message to the White House via e-mail. That
event was also used to mark the final commercial U.S. ship-to-shore telegraph message
transmitted from North America by Globe Wireless, a company founded in 1911. Sent from its
wireless station at Half Moon Bay, California, the sign-off message was a repeat of Samuel F. B.
Morse's message 155 years earlier, "What hath God wrought?"[26]
[edit] Worldwide discontinuance of telegrams
Eircom, Ireland's largest telecommunication company and former PTT, formally discontinued
Telex services on 30 July 2002.[27] Western Union announced the discontinuation of all of its
telegram services effective from 31 January 2006.[28] Only 20,000 telegrams were sent in 2005,
compared with 20 million in 1929. According to Western Union, which still offers money
transfer services, its last telegram was sent Friday, 27 January 2006.[29] The company stated that
this was its "final transition from a communications company to a financial services
company."[30] Telegram service in the United States and Canada is still available, operated by
iTelegram and Globegram. Some companies, like Swedish TeliaSonera, still deliver telegrams as
nostalgic novelty items, rather than a primary means of communication.

In the Netherlands, telegram operations ceased in 2004.[citation needed] On 9 February 2007, according
to the online edition of the Telegraaf newspaper, the Netherlands national telecommunications
company KPN pulled the plug on the last Telex machine in the Netherlands after having
operated a Telex network since 1933. As their Telex service had only 200 remaining customers,
it was decided that it was no longer worthwhile to continue to offer Telex within the
Netherlands. It is, however, still possible to send Telex messages to foreign customers through
the Internet. In Belgium, traditional telegram operations ceased 28 February 2007. The
Belgacom Telex services were replaced by RealTelex, an internet based Telex alternative.[31]

In Japan, NTT provides a telegram (denpou) service that is today used mainly for special
occasions such as weddings, funerals, graduations, etc.[32] Local offices offer telegrams printed
on special decorated paper and envelopes.

In New Zealand, while general public use telegrams have been discontinued,[33] a modern variant
has arisen for businesses, mainly utilities and the like, to send urgent confidential messages to
their customers, leveraging off the perception that these are important messages. New Zealand
Post describes the service as "a cost effective debt collection tool designed to help you to recover
overdue money from your customers. New Zealand Post Telegrams are delivered by a courier in
a Telegram branded envelope on Telegram branded paper. This has proven to be an effective
method to spur customers into immediate action".[34]

In the United Kingdom, the international telegram service formerly provided by British Telecom
has been spun off as an independent company which promotes the use of telegrams as a retro
greeting card or invitation.[35]

In Australia, Australia Post's TELeGRAM service "combines new age demands with old world
charm to offer you a quick, convenient way to send a message that matters."[36] Messages can be
submitted online or by telephone, and can be printed on a range of template designs. The printed
telegrams are dispatched using Express Post Mail Service or the Ordinary Mail Service. Orders
received before 15:00 are dispatched on the same day. The cost of the service, being AUD4.50
for Ordinary and AUD8.50 for Express Post Mail Services in comparison with AUD0.50 for an
Australia-wide postage fee, makes this service too expensive for day-to-day communication.
In Mexico, the telegram is still used as a low-cost communication service for people who cannot
afford or do not have the computer skills required to send an e-mail.[37]

In Nepal, the Telex service has been discontinued as of January 1, 2009. Nepal Telecom states
the reason for its decision due to "availability of advanced technology in data communication."[38]

In Bahrain, Batelco still offers telegram services. They are thought to be more formal than an
email or a fax, but less so than a letter. So should a death or anything of importance occur,
telegrams would be sent.