Before There Was Twitter There Were Telegrams.. STOP

When every word cost something.

Long before there was Twitter there were telegrams.

They were the physical child of the telegraph, the first rapid communications system in the world.

Those who wished to send telegrams paid by the word, and so brevity was important.

Of course, Twitter doesn’t cost anything. Ironically, Twitter has a much higher valuation that Western Union, which may go a long way to explaining why our economy is such a mess, but that’s another story.

Telegrams had an impact.

You may get a hundred tweets a day, if you’re active in the Twitterati (is there such a word) but in the old days, getting a telegram was generally a harbinger of bad news. It didn’t happen hardly at all.

While the impact of receiving a Tweet may have softened, the need to squeeze important information into a few lines has been reanimated by the arrival of Twitter.

A few of the more famous short yet powerful Telegram Messages of the past might stimulate more creativity for our Tweeting present, courtesy NY Times.

Western Union charged by the word, turning the loquacious terse, and sometimes ambiguous. A reporter asked the actor Cary Grant about his age.

HOW OLD CARY GRANT?

The actor supposedly replied:

OLD CARY GRANT FINE. HOW YOU?

In 1939, the British naval command described a change in government in three words.

WINSTON IS BACK.

Both Mark Twain and Arthur Conan Doyle supposedly sent similar telegrams to a dozen prominent men, all of whom packed up and left town immediately.

FLEE AT ONCE — ALL IS DISCOVERED.

The shortest telegram is attributed to both Oscar Wilde and Victor Hugo. The author cabled his publisher, asking about sales of a new novel.

?

The publisher exuberantly replied.

!

John F. Kennedy used to joke during his 1960 presidential campaign that he had just received a telegram from his father.

DEAR JACK: DON’T BUY ONE MORE VOTE THAN NECESSARY. I’LL BE DAMNED IF I PAY FOR A LANDSLIDE.

Telegrams also corrected mistakes. When Mark Twain heard that his obituary had been published, he cabled from London in 1897.

THE REPORTS OF MY DEATH ARE GREATLY EXAGGERATED.