2/16/2016

Invest In The Singing Telegrams Bay Area Residents Use

By Charles Sullivan


Over humanities recorded history there have been many different ways of communication used, both simple and complex. Simple in that humans once used horseback and smoke signals to communicate with one another. Nowadays there is a global communication network and much of the earths human population is a part of this network. There are still communicational relics that are left over from the past, usually used for the purpose of a joke one of these forms of communication is that of the singing telegrams bay area residents use in many cities.

The telegram is a very old method of communication. Being the most widely used communication method before the invention of the telephone it was basically a signal containing a written message sent through wire or broadcast. In its earliest incarnation it was received through dots and dashes, that is to say through Morse code.

This method of communicating was most often used to deliver news that was of a serious nature. They were not used to talk about things in general, they had very specific uses, for example delivering the news of a death or a birth was one of the most popular uses. Telegrams that are sung take away the seriousness of a telegram and replace it instead with something comedic.

Telegrams that are sung got their start in the year of 1933. A company at that time that specialized in receiving and delivering telegrams was the first to sing one to a recipient. It was the idea of the public relations officer of that company. One day they received a telegram from a fan wishing a Hollywood star a happy birthday. The PR officer had the brilliant idea of getting the operator to sing the message to the recipient as opposed to just reading it like normal.

Because telegrams were most often associated with deaths and funerals and other such serious news, this public relations director wanted to make them fun and in doing so give them another use, which he hoped would make them more popular. However this idea of his was not well received by the company, and he was told that he had made the company a laughing stock.

This form of telegram is in fact the only part of the telegram legacy that is left today. With telephones replacing them in the 1960's they became obsolete fast, So the only telegrams that were being delivered from then on were way more humorous and done in person as opposed to how they were delivered before.

State funded companies such as the one that came up with the first sung telegram no longer participate in this practice. Instead there are many private companies that now offer this service. It is much more of a theatrical service now than it was before. The messenger is usually required to dress up as something that relates to the message that they are singing and they are delivered straight to the recipient wherever they may be. Although this is the usual method of delivery the message may be delivered other ways, such as on a DVD.

This form of communication, although it is one of the oldest is now unrecognizable from it's original form. With silly costumes and humorous messages taking place of the dots and dashes, or often serious news that was received over the wire.




About the Author:



0 comments:

Post a Comment