...electrical telegraphy, the first SMS system...

Silly short-sighted humans, what with their innate inability to not remember things, but desire to lunge head first into forgetting many things, in fact, as many things as possible.  Add to this the recent, and it has been relatively recent, prevalence of the smartphone, of the computer in your pocket, of "always on", of social space - it takes trial to be apart from your electronica.  It will be a wonder if the brain will re-adjust, for not too long ago, it was the minutiae of technology that we had to retain and use.

Well kids, there used to be a system that is well over 180 years old and was definitively the precursor to all that is today - that of electrical telegraphy.

It was, in the late 1840s, an electrical communications network that spanned tens of thousands of miles across the United States and Europe.  It brought communication instantly over major distances, where only physical carrier could have brought it before.  Because the communication was cost-intensive, folks had to come up with ingenious grammatical and spelling devices to get the benefit of saving a few dollars.  It was, in no short order, the first electrical proof of SMS communication.  (Where even some commentators assert that it was the first internet.)

With the closure of the last telegraph system in India (http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/bangalore/telegram-dead-start-mourning/article4813592.ece), it is the end of a an almost 200-year old technology; and it was smartphone SMS that eventually killed it.  But, telegraphy built the foundation for all of modern cell, line, networked, switching systems.  Now, the seemingly simple set-up of electrical wire, electromagnets and some mechanical instrumentation will reside in museums, where the era of scientific nostalgia has still yet to happen (but abounds for cultural nostalgia).

We could have lugged this around, right?

But, if not for the restrictions of technology, we wouldn't do what humans do best: improvise with what we are given.  Telegraphy set the foundation for L337 or SMS phrases, as witnessed by this Western Union "92 Code" list, designed to provide a two-digit numeral to the most common telegraphy phrases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/92_Code.  In particular, do these sound familiar?

- "88" - love and kisses
- "55" - important
- "13" - I understand

Or even "Wood's Telegraphic Codes" (1864):

- "1" - wait a minute
- "7" - don't know
- "N." - no, not
- "Q." - question

In the interest of speed and cost, telegraph operators found ways to be efficient: imagine that Morse Code was not originally designed to be anything other than writing shorthand, or receiving a visual display of the code.  Operators became so adept at interpreting the stream, they could listen by ear and understand the message.  [It has always frustrated me that I have never been able to do this - even after taking some serious time as a child toward the endeavor.  I would, however, easily adopt the phonetic alphabet in the Army.]

Consider some of the ingenious text msg short hand you could think of today, many coming from the days of ye olde pager:

- "10Q" - thank you

- "182" - I hate you

- "143" - I love you

- "^5" - high five

- "^URS" - up yours

Now that's just 2QT.