Telegraphy - E-mail Displaces Telegraphy

E-mail Displaces Telegraphy

E-mail was first invented for CTSS and similar time sharing systems of the era in the mid-1960s. At first, e-mail was possible only between different accounts on the same computer (typically a mainframe). ARPANET allowed different computers to be connected to allow e-mails to be relayed from computer to computer, with the first ARPANET e-mail being sent in 1971. Multics also pioneered instant messaging between computer users in the mid-1970s. With the growth of the Internet, e-mail began to be possible between any two computers with access to the Internet. This led to the development of a form of communication that is a hybrid between a telegram and an email, namely the Edigram. Such communications could be sent on a round-the-clock basis, and were characterized as being short, concise and lacking any superfluous terms.

Various private networks like UUNET (founded 1987), the Well (1985), and GEnie (1985) had e-mail from the 1970s, but subscriptions were quite expensive for an individual, US$25 to US$50 per month, just for e-mail. Internet use was then largely limited to government, academia and other government contractors until the net was opened to commercial use in the 1980s.

By the early 1990s, modems made e-mail a viable alternative to Telex systems in a business environment. But individual e-mail accounts were not widely available until local Internet service providers were in place, although demand grew rapidly, as e-mail was seen as the Internet's killer app. It allowed anyone to email anyone, whereas previously, different system had been walled off from each other, such that America Online subscribers could only email other America Online subscribers, Compuserve subscribers could only email other Compuserve subscribers, etc. The broad user base created by the demand for e-mail smoothed the way for the rapid acceptance of the World Wide Web in the mid-1990s. Fax machines were another technology that helped displace the telegram.

On Monday, 12 July 1999, a final telegram was sent from the National Liberty Ship Memorial, the SS Jeremiah O'Brien, in San Francisco Bay to President Bill Clinton in the White House. Officials of Globe Wireless reported that "The message was 95 words, and it took six or eight minutes to copy it." They then transmitted the message to the White House via e-mail. That event was also used to mark the final commercial U.S. ship-to-shore telegraph message transmitted from North America by Globe Wireless, a company founded in 1911. Sent from its wireless station at Half Moon Bay, California, the sign-off message was a repeat of Samuel F. B. Morse's message 155 years earlier, "What hath God wrought?"