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Author Topic: !  (Read 9128 times)

N6PG

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W1JKA

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RE: !
« Reply #2 on: June 16, 2013, 06:00:34 AM »

Telegrams,Pony Express,Para sets.Sounds like a good plot and basis for an in the future type movie when the world gets to dependent on Hi-tech microwave/digital type communications.
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G3EDM

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RE: !
« Reply #3 on: June 16, 2013, 07:17:21 AM »

Growing up in Europe 50 years ago, telegrams were a part of life although they tended to be used either for life/death news or when the recipient was in an out-of-the way location without easy access to phones etc. In the 1960s my parents had a vacation home in southern France at the end of 4 miles of dirt track, without phone or electricity. Every couple of weeks a delivery guy from the local village post office would turn up on his moped to deliver a telegram, usually announcing the pending arrival of guests (they had no other way to get in touch with us, except by mail). The guy was liberally irrigated by my parents, usually with Pastis, and the telegram was openened (and a reply prepared, if needed).

I can still remember the day I got my exam results graduating from high school in England. I was traveling at the time and got a telegram from my parents: "CONGRATULATIONS WELL DONE GREENER PASTURES ALL." Somehow a telegram had an impact and "officialness" that nothing else had.

But even in those days, and indeed going back even decades earlier, these weren't really telegrams. They were Telexes, printed out on a clattery printer at the local post office and shoved into an envelope. The same thing applied in the U.S. (I suspect the transition to Telex was even earlier, in America). Among my parents' letters, I have found wartime (WWII) telegrams that already had the apperance of a Telex.

Later, when I worked as a foreign correspondent, my employer gave me a "Telegraph Card" that I was supposed to use in local post offices to send news dispatches back to head office. Even then, they were basically obsolete -- I was already filing entirely with a laptop or personally from a hotel Telex. I never used the card. I was very profficient on the Telex ... because despite the high tech laptops we carried, there were plenty of places in the world where the phone lines weren't good enough to file digitally, or not available for international filing.

I wonder when the last *Morse* telegram was sent? Also, I wonder whether there may still be some really isolated spots where some form of telegram/telex is still used, notwithstanding the Christian Science Monitor's (unsourced) assertion that the Indian shutdown implies "the last telegram"?

73 de Martin, KB1WSY
« Last Edit: June 16, 2013, 07:32:35 AM by KB1WSY »
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KH6AQ

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RE: !
« Reply #4 on: June 16, 2013, 07:25:32 AM »

Indian telegrams have not been sent using Morse Code for some time.

           "Mr. Ram once learned the Morse code technology for telegraphy, but today oversees staff who type out and send
            telegrams over a Web software."

A few years ago actual Morse Code telegrams were being sent in Northern part of the Philippines.

It look like the CSM is incorrect. Telegrams are alive and well even in the USA.

   http://www.itelegram.com/
« Last Edit: June 16, 2013, 07:32:04 AM by WX7G »
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W7ASA

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RE: !
« Reply #5 on: June 16, 2013, 09:15:14 AM »

There is coast station KSM, still passing CW radio traffic (now for free) on a weekend schedule and occasional special events.  They are an actual, licensed maritime shore station.  I have passed Morse traffic via KSM regularly from the boat on HF CW on my endorsed marine HF license as a private vessel.  It's great to work radio TFC through the various Sparkies out there in Bolinas, California...

Have a look through their website. 

radiomarine.org

They also have ham stations operating while the maritime station is up.


Morse Forever!    ;^)

de Ray
W7ASA ..._ ._
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KE4JOY

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RE: !
« Reply #6 on: June 17, 2013, 12:43:51 PM »

Yea read this today. An end to an era I suppose. I found it interisting that they stated that their system handles some 5,000 pieces of traffic a day yet they shut it down. Just seems odd.
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G3EDM

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RE: !
« Reply #7 on: June 18, 2013, 10:07:24 AM »

The Indian telegraph story is in the New York Times today, see: http://tinyurl.com/mqjt5cf.

It's an excellent read.

73 de Martin, KB1WSY
« Last Edit: June 18, 2013, 10:13:19 AM by KB1WSY »
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KH6AQ

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RE: !
« Reply #8 on: June 18, 2013, 02:00:52 PM »

Yea read this today. An end to an era I suppose. I found it interisting that they stated that their system handles some 5,000 pieces of traffic a day yet they shut it down. Just seems odd.

Could be it loses money even at 5000 a day.
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