[GreenKeys] BBC News Magazine announces end of India's telegraph

[Roy Morgan]

Greenkeyers,

The BBC News  Magazine announces:
"Telegrams STOP: End of service delivering joy and heartache"
See:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23271384

The article includes a picture of 1880's key and sounder and these:

"India's last telegram will be sent on Sunday night as the country's state-run telegraph service shuts down. It has been in decline for decades, but once touched the lives of millions of Indians ever year … "

"Telegraph: The early days
(picture) 
	• 1851: 30-mile electric telegraph line constructed from Calcutta to suburb of Diamond Harbour by East India Company and is opened for official use
	• 1853: Large-scale construction of telegraph lines begins
	• 1854: Act passed to regulate establishment and management of telegraph
	• 1855: Telegraph service thrown open to public use as "new method of rapid communication"
	• 1857: Post of director general of Telegraph is created and Irishman Sir William O'Shaughnessy Brooke is appointed"

Pictures of six telegrams from earlier days from a collection of over 2000 are on the web article.

I am just now beck from seeing the automobile display/gathering on Samuel Morse estate in Poughkeepsie, NY.  I toured the small exhibit there and saw some of the equipment from the 1800's through the mid 1900's.  The wind-up paper-tape code practice machine was not made by Instructograph, but is very similar to one I own.

Shall we all zip over there and scoop up all the old equipment from outlying rural offices?

Roy


Roy Morgan
k1lky at earthlink.net
K1LKY Since 1958 - Keep 'em Glowing!