In India, the Dot Dash Is Done

cold fjord writes that, as promised last month, telegraph service in India is being honorably retired: "Only 7 years behind the US. From Forbes: '... in India, where I'm now sojourning, telegraph service has survived as a basic means of communication since the British East India Company sent the first telegram from Calcutta to nearby Diamond Harbor in 1850... As of July 15, the state company that runs the telegraph service is shutting it down. ... "For long, the telegraph was eyed with suspicion as an emblem of imperial rule," editorialized The Indian Express ... "Yet it brought various parts of the country together and eventually entered the traffic of everyday life. When the telegraph winds up, one of the oldest markers of a modern India will be lost. Stop" — the word that typically ended brief telegraphic phrases rather than periods. Until fairly recently, several hundred thousand messages a day moved over the wires of the telegraph system ...' From NBC: 'When it was completed in 1856, the Indian telegraph stretched over 4,000 miles ... Tom Standage, author of "The Victorian Internet" writes, the early telegraph networks were responsible for "hype, skepticism, hackers, on-line romances and weddings, chat-rooms, flame wars, information overload, predictions of imminent world peace."'"

Comments

Chat rooms?

[SeaFox]

I'd like to know how a chat room worked on a telegraph.

Probably poetry was possible

[tanveer1979]

   <  >  !   *  '  '  #
     Waka waka bang splat tick tick hash,

    ^  "    `    $   $  -
     Caret quote back-tick dollar dollar dash,

    !  *  =  @  $    _
     Bang splat equal at dollar under-score,

    %   *   <  >  ~   #   4
     Percent splat waka waka tilde number four,

     &     [    ]   . .  /
     Ampersand bracket bracket dot dot slash,

     |       {      ,    ,   SYSTEM HALTED
     Vertical-bar curly-bracket comma comma CRASH.

http://poetry.about.com/od/poetryplay/l/blwakawaka.htm

Re:Probably poetry was possible

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Waka waka bang splat tick tick hash, Caret quote back-tick dollar dollar dash, Bang splat equal at dollar under-score, Percent splat waka waka tilde number four, Ampersand bracket bracket dot dot slash, Vertical-bar curly-bracket comma comma CRASH.

Strange . . . that sounds like my upper management, talking about how we need to "tap into the power of social networks with modeling and visualization".

Cell phone penetration

[Frankie70]

And cell phone in India is massive as compared to land lines ever were.
 

Cellphone penetration in India, I meant - cellphones themselves are not so massive except for the Samsung phablets

Is Slashdot

[Black Parrot]

what you get when you telegraph while drunk?

Re:one way to catch dudes is Google

[wonkey_monkey]

one way to catch dudes is Google

Your lifestyle is none of my business, but this isn't the place.

Typical message?

[Anonymous Coward]

Kindly do the needful. STOP. Warmest regards. STOP