Telegram

Telegram (pronounced tel-i-gram)

(1) A message or communication sent by telegraph; a telegraphic dispatch.

(2) To send a telegram across a telegraphic service.

(3) As Telegram, a freeware, cross-platform, instant messaging (IM) service, launched in 2013 and noted for its secure end-to-end encryption (including an innovative approach to message self-destruction).

1852: A creation of American English, the construct being tele- + -gram.  Tele- was from the Ancient Greek τῆλε (têle) (at a distance, far off, far away, far from).  Gram was from the Ancient Greek suffix -γραμμα (-gramma), from γράμμα (grámma) (that which is drawn; a picture, a drawing; that which is written, a character, an alphabet letter, written letter, piece of writing), from γράφω (gráphō) (to scratch, to scrape, to graze), from stem of graphein (to draw or write).  Although some words with the element are Greek compounds, others are modern formations.  The alternative -gramme was a French form which is now extinct in English except as an affectation or in commerce.  As a noun word-forming element it was used in the sense of “that which is written or marked, drawn or otherwise recorded”.  Telegram is a noun or verb (used with or without object), telegrammed & telegramming are verbs and telegrammatic & telegrammic are adjectives; the noun plural is telegrams.  The alternative spelling in English was the rare and now extinct telegramme.  As a descriptor of a new technology, telegram (sometimes even without localized variations in spelling) was around the world assimilated into many languages as the cables were extended and wires connected.

Recorded first among US Marines in the South Pacific in 1944, latrinogram was a jocular reference to barracks gossip, reliable or otherwise, which tended to be exchanged while using the latrines.  The element was later abstracted for commercial purposes such as the proprietary constructs Candygram (1959), Gorillagram (1979) & Stripagram (1981).  The most famous of all, Instagram, (operating first in 2010 and acquired by Facebook (Meta) in 2012) was actually a construction which violates Greek grammar which didn’t permit an adverb properly to form part of a compound noun; it should however be regarded as correct in English. There had before Instagram been controversy.  After the telegram service was first advertised in 1852, the classically schooled and appalled lost little time correcting the less learned, informing all the proper formation would be telegrapheme.  However, for neither the first time nor the last, English choose the handy vernacular over a mouthful of correctness and when the instant messaging (IM) service Telegram was launched in 2013, nobody objected to the name.  In both commerce and slang, other words related to wired telegraphy were created or emerged including telegraph, buzzer, cable, cablegram, call, flash, wire, teletype & eventually, “telegram” came usually to mean something quite specific: a short message (charging was by the word or letter) sent across a wire and printed by the receiving office, then delivered to the door of the receiver.

Telegrams have figured in many instances of historical significance, not because of anything inherent in the process of the telegram but because the wire services were at the time the quickest means by which information might be sent over distance from one place to another.  As technology improved, the transmission of urgent messages migrated to whatever was fastest:  When Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865; US president 1861-1865) was assassinated, the news, sent by trans-Atlantic steamship took twelve days to reach Europe.  When William McKinley (1843–1901; US president 1897-1901) was assassinated, the news was within minutes transmitted around the world to anywhere with a cable connection.  When John Kennedy (1917–1963; US president 1961-1963) was assassinated, the wire services carried the news almost at once but visual footage of the event wasn't seen in many places within the US for some hours and in many places overseas for a day or more until the canisters of films were air-freighted to TV stations.  When in 1981 there was an attempt to assassinate Ronald Reagan (1911–2004; US president 1981-1989), within minutes there was a live feed of the scene of the event relayed by satellite to TV channels around the world.

Hawley Crippen (1862–1910; a US born homeopath who styled himself “Dr” Crippen) is thought to have been the first murderer captured with the aid of wireless telegraphy.  After killing his wife in London, he absconded with his lover to Canada.  Although both were in disguise, he was recognized by the ship’s captain who sent a telegram to Scotland Yard just before the ship moved beyond wireless range.  The police sent an officer to Canada aboard a faster ship and he was in port to arrest Crippen.  Convicted, Crippen was hanged at Pentonville Prison.

The Zimmermann Telegram (referred to in some historical sources as a note or cable) was a diplomatic message sent in January 1917, in code, by Arthur Zimmermann (1864–1940: German foreign minister 1916-1917) to the German ambassador to Mexico.  It proposed a military alliance between Germany and Mexico under which Mexico would recover the territories of Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico, lost in the Mexican–American War (1846-1848).  The publicity generated contributed to the anyway swelling support for US participation in the Great War, the American declaration of war on Germany coming in April 1917.  The Zimmermann Telegram is of interest also in the history of espionage and cryptography because it was the British intelligence services which decoded the text and passed the content to the Washington.  That was fine but also required some subterfuge because, with many trans-Atlantic cables cut due to war-time restrictions, most traffic now went by the one circuitous route, the British had to concoct a story so it appeared they could intercept German messages but not those of the US.

Telegram’s messages can be set to self-destruct.

WhatsApp added the feature too but Telegram’s option is more configurable.  The self-destruct mode can be attached only to a secret chat and the menu is accessed through the usual three-lined menu through which a secret chat is enabled.  From here, through the dots at the top-right, the self-destruct timer will appear and this, for obvious reasons, is not on by default and must manually be selected.  Users have the choice to set their messages last as little as one second or as long as a week, the timer countdown starting at the point when the receiver sees the message.  Telegram will mark the message with two green checkmarks to confirm the countdown has begun.  As a word of caution, the self-destruct mechanism is invoked also on replies to the message, the length of time still to elapse before a message vanishes is displayed at the bottom of the chat.  The rules for images and videos vary a little but the principle is the same.

Telegrams also made famous a number of very short messages, noted for their succinctness, the brevity of the medium encouraged by the sender being charged per letter or word.  A celebrated exception to tendency for telegrams to be short was that sent to the US State Department by diplomat George Kennan (1904–2005) then attached to the US embassy in Moscow.  It’s remembered in history as the “Long Telegram” and Kennan choose the telegram as the medium, ostensibly because of the urgency of the matters he wished to discuss but also because, being uniquely long (5,363 words), it would gain attention; he would later note that his views until that point had been ignored.

What Kennan advocated was a policy of containment.  He noted the Russian people were "...by and large, friendly to outside world, eager for experience of it..." and that the threat presented by the USSR was that of the "...apparatus of power (party, secret police and government)..." but that it was "exclusively with these" that the governments of the West were forced to deal.  The implications of this he illustrated by pointing out that while the history of the early twentieth century had shown "...peaceful and mutually profitable coexistence of capitalist and socialist states is entirely possible...", at the "...bottom of Kremlin's neurotic view of world affairs is traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity…” and  “…they have always feared foreign penetration, feared direct contact between Western world and their own, feared what would happen if Russians learned truth about world without or if foreigners learned truth about world within. And they have learned to seek security only in patient but deadly struggle for total destruction of rival power, never in compacts and compromises with it."  Among the tactics he identified as distinctly Russian was that of setting "Western Powers against each other. Anti-British talk will be plugged among Americans, anti-American talk among British. Continentals, including Germans, will be taught to abhor both Anglo-Saxon powers. Where suspicions exist, they will be fanned; where not, ignited."

Because memories of the war were so recent, Kennan felt compelled to point out that “Soviet power, unlike that of Hitlerite Germany, is neither schematic nor adventuristic.  It does not work by fixed plans. It does not take unnecessary risks. Impervious to logic of reason, and it is highly sensitive to logic of force. For this reason it can easily withdraw-and usually does when strong resistance is encountered at any point.  Thus, if the adversary has sufficient force and makes clear his readiness to use it, he rarely has to do so. If situations are properly handled there need be no prestige-engaging showdowns.”  Tellingly (this was before the USSR gained nuclear weapons), he added that “gauged against Western World as a whole, Soviets are still by far the weaker force. Thus, their success will really depend on degree of cohesion, firmness and vigor which Western World can muster. And this is factor which it is within our power to influence.”

Containment became US policy but the reaction to Kennan’s views, later published in extended form (anonymously as “X Article”, a method which would later be reprised as the QAnon myth), were mixed, some claiming he was advocating little more than a maintenance of a nineteenth century “balance of power” while others could envisage his system working only by the US subsidizing and maintaining its own system of client states, something which later was said to be something of a description of NATO. 

In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in capitals of both sides of the Atlantic, there’s probably been some re-reading of the Long Telegram (probably in summary form; even at the time some admitted it was a bit too long) but then in Moscow some might also have looked up the words used by Georgy Zhukov (1896–1974; Soviet WWII general & Marshal of the Soviet Union) in which he explained the failure of the German offensive in 1942 as being “…due to an under-estimation of the forces and potentialities of the Soviet State, the indomitable spirit of the people.  It also stems from an over-estimation by the Nazis of their own forces and capabilities.”