THE END OF TELEGRAM ERA IN INDIA

• The word "telegraph" was first coined by the French inventor Claude Chappe.
• A 'telegraph' is a device for transmitting and receiving messages over long distances, i.e., for telegraphy. The word "telegraph" alone now generally refers to an electrical telegraph.
• In 1837, American inventor Samuel F. B. Morse conducted the first successful experiment with an electrical recording telegraph.
• Telegraph services in India date back to 1850, when the first experimental telegraph line was established between Calcutta and Diamond Harbour.
• The British East India Company started using the telegraph a year later, and by 1854—when the system opened to the public—telegraph lines had been laid across the country.
• The telegraph continued to thrive, in India and around the world, even after Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone in 1876. For more than half a century, telegrams were sent over cable lines, but in 1902 (capitalizing on the work of Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi) the Indian system went wireless.
• In India, as in the rest of the world, a trend toward digital communications that began with the advent of the digital computer in the 1960s, increasingly threatened the continued relevance of the telegraph.
• By the 1980s, Fax—and later email—began to eclipse telegrams, regular mail and other earlier communications systems, a process that only accelerated with the rise of the Internet.
• In the 1990s, Indian telecommunications company Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL) took over the country’s telegraph system from the Indian postal service.
• But the increasing dominance of email and SMS continued to take its toll on the newly privatized telegraph.
• Two years ago, faced with declining revenues, BSNL instituted the first telegram price hike in some 60 years.
• Last March, in a last-ditch effort to cut costs, the company ceased international telegraph service.
• Despite these efforts to make the telegraph business financially viable, BSNL still posted losses of some 17 million rupees (U.S. $290,000) during the last two years.
• When BSNL then asked the Indian government to support the telegraph again, the company was told to evaluate whether the system was still necessary.
• As a result, in consultation with the Department of Posts, BSNL decided to cease all services beginning July 15, 2013. 
• number of countries—including Russia, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Mexico, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Bahrain—continue to offer full telegraph services.

source: www.history.com

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