Telegram Fades from Use as E-mail, Technology Take Over.

Byline: Rusty Marks

Sep. 27--There was a time when the fastest way to transmit urgent information was by telegram. The death of a soldier, details of a major disaster, vital business instructions or other important news were given to the Western Union office to be transmitted across the globe in a crackle of electricity.

Today, most people rely on e-mail for quick communication, causing some to ponder the future of the historic telegram.

"I can't figure out why anyone would send a telegram," said Dwight Jensen, who teaches a course in mass media history at Marshall University in Huntington.

"The telegraph was the Internet of its day," Jensen said. "For a lot of years it was the email. Technology has just caught up with it."

In its day, though, the telegraph was revolutionary. When a painter named Samuel Morse (the inventor of Morse Code) strung the first telegraph lines around his classroom in 1835, it took 10 days to send mail by fast horse from Missouri to California, and transcontinental rail lines were still a dream.

Morse's invention could transmit information along a wire at the speed of light. In 1843, he talked President Martin Van Buren into providing $30,000 to build an experimental telegraph line from Baltimore to Washington, D.C. Morse sent the first telegraph message on the line on May 24, 1844, the signal ...