#8. Telegraph

About there being no entry yesterday, I was in fucking Canton, Ohio on little sleep and busy all day, then got a flat tire, got rained on while on the airplane (don't ever fly Airtran), and had to put up with little kids yapping in my ear all day. So cut me some fucking slack, will ya?

Back before such ground-breaking, world-changing inventions as Fascism, Communism, and the Confederate States of America, some guy, an American, invented the telegraph. And boy, was it a thing of beauty.

Suddenly, you could communicate with anyone, anywhere in the world, so long as you had access to a telegraph machine, they had a telegraph machine, there was a wire connecting the two, you had a few hours to wait to get the response, and you knew how to transcribe morse code. Never had communication been simpler.

Another type of archaic long distance communication

There it was, one machine to end them all, to overpower and make the world simpler. What could topple it?

But just like Fascism, Communism, and Confederatism, it fell victim to technology.

First we had the telephone, which eliminated the long delay between the two parties and the need to transcribe morse code, relegating morse code to the the military and promoting English, the last time the English system of promotion and relegation was used in this country.


Then we gots cars, which allowed us to actually drive and meet the people we spoke to on the phone.

Finally, the internet came into being, allowing computers to even replace telephone as a mode of conversation and Craigslist to replace Las Vegas as the number one source of prostitution.

Meanwhile, telegraph's use dwindled.

While it still held on for a while because of the brevity of its messages and the fact that you could send a message even if the recipient was not there, other less significant inventions destroyed even that use.

Like, for instance, the invention of that woman who does all the answering machine messages, forcing companies to make answering machines so she could record her generic messages.

As these inventions took over, the telegraph slowly died, eventually breathing it's last breath while I was in my AP U.S. History Class in January, 2006. And it was a sad day, as it is whenever something that old and decrepit departs us.

Speaking of old and decrepit

But like everything else that has died, it still left an impression. Plenty of things die, but don't leave a mark. The death of obscure things, like Morris Brown College or that building on the corner of Main and 7th that has been vacant since 1987 or the Canadian Prime Minister go unnoticed and therefore won't be mentioned on this blog. Telegraph, on the other hand, left an impact, and thus will be memorialized.

So rest in peace, telegraph, alongside the value of the dollar, political incorrectness, the credibility of baseball players, and your blog on Polynesian oceanic microorganisms. You deserve your high sport in inanimate heaven.