The telegram will be officially laid to rest next month in India, when the state-run telecom sends its last message. The first telegram was sent in 1844, and telegrams have played an important role - in both real life and fiction - in the years since then.
Telegrams are as ubiquitous in historical fiction as phone calls are in modern fiction, and for the same reason. They provide urgent narrative drama, and their immediacy allowed them to overcome otherwise insurmountable long distances.
Dracula
Bram Stoker
The original vampire novel, Bram Stoker's masterpiece is an epistolary tale which is told in the form of letters, diary entries, ship's logs, and yes, telegrams. Telegrams play key roles in the novel at several points. For example, the delay of a telegram from Van Helsing to Dr. Seward by a day is ultimately responsible for Lucy's death.
Cryptonomicon
Neal Stephenson
The portions of the novel which are set in the WWII era rely heavily on telegrams, which Stephenson highlights as part of the overall theme that runs through the book of the intersection between technology and communication. Not only do telegrams fly back and forth throughout the WWII era storyline, they are also referenced (usually sarcastically) in the contemporary timeline as well.
Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Conan Doyle
The BBC's modern reinterpretation of Sherlock is a man who is fast and nimble with a text message, and the original Sherlock was no different, except that his media of choice was the more historically-appropriate telegram. Telegrams cost a fortune in Sherlock's day, but they were also fast, secure, and reliable. They had the advantage of allowing pre-paid responses, which Holmes used frequently in order to encourage (and subsidize) answers to his queries. Watson said of Holmes, "He has never been known to write where a telegram would serve."
Image courtesy Flickr/boeke
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