Telegrams – the SMS of the past?

While cataloguing some papers this morning I came accross a file of telegrams. Their stunted phrasing struck me as quite romantic and reminded me of text messages in the days when most people didn’t have packages that allow 1000 free a month and were restricted to pay-as-you-go so everything had to be said in a limited number of characters.

However, the thing I really wanted to share was this image of the envelopes, which are much more visually interesting than the actual telegram messages. Also, does anyone else love the phrase “Ocean Letter”?

Who knows, perhaps one day far in the future someone will find an old mobile phone in a box of stuff in the attic, switch it on, and be able to read the stunted messages contained within.

Though I think for lots of people the texts are more likely to say “Please bring milk”.