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Belgium Ends 19th-Century Telegram Service (bbc.com)
Belgium's telegram service is about to stop. From a report: One hundred and seventy-one years after the first electrical message was transmitted down a line running alongside the railway between Brussels and Antwerp the final dispatch will be sent and received on 29 December. The fact that this 19th-Century technology is still up and running in the age of Instagram and Snapchat may seem rather odd -- especially when you consider that the UK, which invented the telegram in the 1830s, abandoned it as long ago as 1982. The United States followed suit in 2006 and even India, which had been by far the world's biggest market for the telegram, finally closed its system down in 2013.
Da-da did-it.
But seriously, it is good to remember that the telegraph's current loop (with ground/earth return) was used for Teletypes; paper tape punched by these was easily stored or repeated to multiple recipients over radio or other links; Teletypes themselves were easily interfaced to early computers, and begat RS-232 and all today's serial I/O. Dig deep into any modern computer and in a way, it still talks click-clack telegraphy.