The age of
the telegraph
ends in Florida
WHO could have believed it? The telegraph era in the American state of Florida is ending without a flash. Not even a flicker. It's more like a snicker.
The Florida Senate has sent Republican Governor Ron DeSantis a bill that removes an entire chapter of state law regulating the telegraph industry, including $50 penalties for not promptly delivering messages, according to Huffington Post.
In the days before hashtags, texts and FaceTime chats, telegraphs were a big deal. Western Union completed the first transcontinental telegraph line in 1861, dealing a death blow to the struggling Pony Express, which began operations the year before.
Florida laws regarding telegraphs have not had any substantial changes since 1913, and there haven't been any court opinions involving the statutes since 1945, according to a legislative staff analysis.
It's extraordinary that they should be getting around only now to noticing that the telegraph age has passed.
On the other hand, perhaps it's time our own provincial legislature got around to amending the regulations surrounding the use of runners with messages in cleft sticks.
Messages
YES, the telegraph/telex once drove the daily operations of some of us still in the communications field today. It was the only contact with distant offices and newsdesks.
Part of the dodge was, when in remote parts, to locate a telex machine and arrange to be allowed to use it.
Such a telex was in place in the central Angolan town of Nova Lisboa in days of yore. It was in a fancy gents' outfitters' named Nova Yorque. Newspapers around the world received news of the goings-on in Angola – which were pretty hectic at the time – under the telex address Nova Yorque.
A colleague once filed a cracker of a report. Next he got a response from his news editor – "Great piece. But what the hell are you doing in New York?"
The telegraph/telex also carried some memorable and often testy exchanges between foreign correspondents and their newsdesks, all in abbreviated telex jargon. Examples:
· "You people uninformed, unreasonable, unprofessional. Rude letter follows."
· "Farouk resigned. What your plans?" (This to a fellow who had missed the abdication of King Farouk in Egypt).
· "Why you unswim crocodile-infested river like Younghusband?" (This Younghusband had produced a more colourful account of the same expedition for a rival newspaper).
· "Presume you alive, well and living in Africa." (To a fellow who had not written anything for a while). Response: "Every meal a banquet, every night a honeymoon."
The above eventually formed the title of a book by Peter Younghusband, in his day doyen of the corps of foreign correspondents in Africa.
The hulking Younghusband – known as "Bigfoot", the North American version of the Himalayan Yeti or Abominable Snowman - once went to the small port of Banana, at the mouth of the Congo River, so he could write a report under the quirky dateline "Banana Sunday". But the piece was held over for a day and appeared under the dateline "Banana Monday."
Which inspired one of Younghusband's fellow Africa correspondents, Chris Munnion, of the London Telegraph, to write his own hilarious (also disturbing) book titled Banana Sunday.
Such fun. Yep, them wuz the days.
Tailpiece
DICTIONARY definitions (male and female).
Thingy (thing-ee) n.
Female: Any part under a car's bonnet.
Male: The clasp on a woman's bra.
Last word
Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse. - Thomas Szasz
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