Indo European telegraph line stamp – India, 1967 commemorated 100 years of telegraph line between India and Europe.
What is electrical telegraph?
Electrical telegraphs were point-to-point text messaging systems, primarily used from the 1840s until the late 20th century. It was the first electrical telecommunications system and the most widely used of a number of early messaging systems called telegraphs, that were devised to communicate text messages quicker than physical transportation. Electrical telegraphy can be considered to be the first example of electrical engineering.
Text telegraphy consisted of two or more geographically separated stations, called telegraph offices. The offices were connected by wires, usually supported overhead on utility poles. Many different electrical telegraph systems were invented, but the ones that became widespread fit into two broad categories. The first category consists of needle telegraphs in which a needle pointer is made to move electromagnetically with an electric current sent down the telegraph line.
Developments in the field of communication
- Thousands of years BC Speech
- 1500 BC Alphabetic writing
- 1450 Printing press
- 1835 Photography
- 1844 Telegraph
- 1876 Telephone, phonograph
- 1922 Radio broadcasts
- 1954 Transistor radios
- 1973 Fax (facsimile) machines
- 1996 High definition TV broadcast, vast expansion of the Internet
- 2003 PC Tablets with handwriting to text, video email, personal video players.
It is interesting to see how human civilization had made very minor leaps in the field of communication over thousands of years and now has started making rapid strides in it over the last 100 years. 200 years back, communicating across the world seemed impossible and now it has reached a point where anyone can communicate with another at any point in time in the most sophisticated form.
About the stamp and the India – European telegraph line
Several days – that’s how long it took back in the 19th century for news to travel from England, the heartland of the superpower of the day, to its most important colony, India. So when a message from London first reached Calcutta in “only” 28 minutes, it was a world sensation. That a telegram could be transmitted at all across the 11,000 kilometers between the two points was due in large part to Siemens, and became the foundation of the company’s international reputation.
This telegraph line is also considered to be the reasons for the failure of the first independence movement of India. Due to stronger communication channels, British were able to navigate and plan their responses better and hence were able to dissipate the first independence movement in India. This stamp launched in 1967 celebrates 100 years of this telegraph line.