this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2024
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If you mean paying someone to send them, then sure. But it required learning Morse code, and learning to use a keyer.
You couldn't send them overseas until after ~~the invention of radio. Before that the signal traveled along a wire~~ they laid the transatlantic cable.
The only way you were keying in a telegram yourself is if you worked for them.
The first transatlantic telegraph cable was laid down in 1854 and radio waves weren't even theorized until 1873... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_telegraph_cable
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio#History
I had no idea radio was such a recent discovery.
Whoops!
No worries, we can't all know everything all the time.
I kinda suspected I might be wrong about that as I was typing it, and then I was like "Nah! That's just silly. Of course they didn't run a cable across the entire Atlantic Ocean in the 1800's!". But I was wrong. That's actually really impressive.
I remembered this article if you're interested in how we lay cable underwater today. It's even more wild since it's fiberoptic cable. https://www.theverge.com/c/24070570/internet-cables-undersea-deep-repair-ships
You should look into how it was done. Weirdly enough, it's pretty similar to how we lay cable now.
During a short window, a samurai could've faxed president Lincoln (though I believe the samurai and Lincoln would have had to be in the same country)