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Telegram Facts for Kids. Kiddle Encyclopedia.
Telegram facts for kids
This page is about general methods of telegraphy. For the messaging service, see Telegram (software).
A telegram (Greek tele: distant and gramma: letter) is a written message transmitted by using an electric device. The message was carried along wires, and the text written or printed and delivered by hand or teleprinter.
Telegrams were very widely used, because private telephones were not usual. Nowadays they are not useful because most people have private telephones and the use of e-mail. The idea was developed by the British Post Office as a service for urgent letters.
Related pages
Images for kids
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Replica of Claude Chappe's optical telegraph on the Litermont near Nalbach, Germany
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Construction schematic of a Prussian optical telegraph (or semaphore) tower, C. 1835
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Demonstration of the semaphore
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Cooke and Wheatstone's five-needle, six-wire telegraph
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A Morse key
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The first message is received by the Submarine Telegraph Company in London from Paris on the Foy-Breguet instrument in 1851
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A Baudot keyboard, 1884
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Phelps' Electro-motor Printing Telegraph from circa 1880, the last and most advanced telegraphy mechanism designed by George May Phelps
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A Siemens T100 Telex machine
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Western Union telegram circa 1930
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Alexander Bain's facsimile machine, 1850
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Post Office Engineers inspect Marconi's equipment on Flat Holm, May 1897
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Marconi watching associates raising the kite (a "Levitor" by B.F.S. Baden-Powell) used to lift the antenna at St. John's, Newfoundland, December 1901