Telegram

A telegram is a written or printed message, originally sent through telegraphy. The use of the telegrams was popular for social and business correspondence in the latter half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. Even in the telephone age, the telegram remained popular, and spawned its own style of writing that in turn persisted in other media. Telegram services still exist today, though the popularity has largely waned, replaced by other forms of text communication.

Terminology

Initially, telegrams were sent by an electrical telegraph operator or telegrapher using Morse code, or a printing telegraph operator using plain text. A cablegram was a message sent by a submarine telegraph cable, often shortened to "cable" or "wire". The suffix -gram is derived from ancient Greek: γραμμα (gramma), meaning something written, i.e. telegram means something written at a distance and cablegram means something written via a cable, whereas telegraph implies the process of writing at a distance.

Delivery services

A telegram service is a company or public entity that delivers telegrams directly to the recipient. Telegram services were inaugurated after electric telegraphy became available.

Historically, telegrams were sent between a network of interconnected telegraph offices. A person visiting a local telegraph office paid by the word to have a message telegraphed to another office and delivered to the addressee on a paper form. Messages (i.e. telegrams) sent by telegraph could be delivered by telegraph messenger faster than mail. The electric telegraph freed communication from the time constraints of postal mail and revolutionized society and the global economy.