India discontinues its telegram service


Andy Deemer discovered that India was about to decommission its telegram service on July 15, so he ran around Bangalore until he located the telegram office and sent one to a friend, just to document a procedure that is about to vanish forever:

He handed over an old slip of paper, wanted more details than should be necessary, copied everything into a massive bound ledger, spent ten minutes tallying up the bill, and charged only pennies for the experience. And that was it. I have no idea what happened next. Was there furious tapping of dots and dashes, or did he pop open Outlook 95 and send it via email? I don’t even know.

I guess the story isn’t exciting. Not one bit. But receiving the telegrams a week later?

Now that was grand.

The interesting thing is that the telegram system still sees a surprising amount of use; the Bangalore office alone handles 150 telegrams a day. However, that's down from a peak of 25,000-30,000 — the decline started with the introduction of SMS.

Goodbye Telegram / Hello Telegram