The Huffington Post reports that Indian Government telco BSNL is about to turn off its telegram service according to Huffington Post the last in the world.
The service, HP reports, is loosing BSNL $23M per year which with just 5,000 telegrams per day sent represents over $12 per telegram. This is a far cry from the cost of mobile calls in India among the lowest in the world and which can be as low as 1 cent per minute.
The story reminded me of a piece from the Melbourne Argus in 1853 which someone sent me which read;
“To us old colonists who have left Britain long ago, there is something very delightful in the actual contemplation of this, the most perfect of modern inventions.
We call the electric telegraph the most perfect invention of modern times….
As anything more perfect than this is scarcely conceivable, and we really begin to wonder what will be left for the next generation upon which to expend the restless enterprise of the human mind…..
Let us set about the electric telegraph at once.”
The background was that in early 1853, Samuel McGowan, a young Irish-Canadian, arrived in Melbourne bringing with him several Morse telegraphy sets from the United States. He intended to form a private telegraph company to construct and operate telegraph lines between Melbourne and the Victorian gold diggings.
So all technologies have their day. As we marvel day by day the latest internet service or smart phone you can wonder what will the generation in another 160 years be expending that restless enterprise of the human mind on.