Thursday, October 02, 2008

Cell Phone Text Messaging: Wireless Telegrams

The phone was invented as part of the attempt to multiplex the telegraph. It was first thought to be impractical because who would want to go down to the telegraph office to talk when the telegram message could be brought to you. Western Union (the telegraph monopoly) was offered and turned down the rights to the phone.

And here we are, 130 years later, and young people are sending telegrams over their phones and it's us old fuddy duddies who think they should only be used for voice, their original purpose. The phone has now achieved something even better than the original intent - wireless telegrams.

~An interesting comment from Kevin Murphy on this CD post about how there are now more text messages than phone calls.

4 Comments:

At 10/02/2008 7:46 AM, Blogger K T Cat said...

Everything newfangled is oldfangled!

 
At 10/02/2008 9:12 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Western Union was in the telegraph business when they should have been in the communications business.

 
At 10/02/2008 11:36 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Why are text messages so much more expensive than voice on a $/megabyte basis? You pay extra for text when text uses trivial bandwidth compared to voice.

 
At 10/02/2008 4:45 PM, Blogger juandos said...

"Why are text messages so much more expensive than voice on a $/megabyte basis?"...

Because these communications companies know there are people out there dumb enough to pay for that retro feel...

 

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