The Telegraph Refuses to Die: How Dots and Dashes Still Outrun Armies, Algorithms, and Armageddon

The Telegraph: the 19th-Century Internet That Still Outruns Diplomacy
By “Still-Alive” Sanchez, Senior Correspondent, Somewhere with Spotty Wi-Fi

PARIS—On a rain-slick evening near Gare du Nord, a Belgian telecom engineer named Régine hooks a clackety brass key to a 160-year-old circuit and taps out “CQ CQ DE FN RÉGINE.” Within minutes an Italian ham in Palermo, a Korean cargo captain off Mombasa, and a retired Bolivian taxidermist in La Paz answer in staccato bursts of Morse. None of them will ever meet, yet they share an intimacy that would make Mark Zuckerberg weep into his algorithmic pillow.

The telegraph, dear Dave’s Locker reader, refuses to die. While Silicon Valley unicorns implode quarterly and 5G towers are torched by conspiracy theorists who also own microwaves, the original “instant” messaging system keeps humming along copper, fiber, ionosphere, and occasionally kite string. In an age when a presidential tweet can vaporize $2 trillion in market cap before breakfast, the telegraph’s quaint dots and dashes still carry tsunami warnings across the Pacific faster than fiber-optic sales brochures can promise “ultra-low latency.”

Global significance? Start with geopolitics. When Russian tanks rolled toward Kyiv in 2022, Western intelligence watched TikTok videos, but Ukrainian rail workers coordinated sabotage using 1930s-era landline telegraphs—because nothing says “cyber-resilience” like technology nobody remembers how to hack. Meanwhile, in the South China Sea, the People’s Liberation Navy still trains signalmen in Morse amid fears that a well-aimed coronal mass ejection could turn every GPS satellite into a very expensive disco ball. Even the Taliban—who once banned music, kite flying, and, presumably, joy—recently restored telegraph lines in rural provinces. Why? Because solar-powered keys work after the cell towers have been converted to goat sheds.

Economically, the ghost of Samuel Morse haunts global finance more than crypto bros care to admit. Every major commodity exchange from Chicago to Dalian retains a last-ditch telegraph link in case the high-frequency traders’ microwave dishes cook themselves. When the Swiss National Bank stunned currency markets by unpegging the franc in 2015, some FX brokers who’d laughed at “obsolete” telegraph circuits suddenly found their Bloomberg terminals quoting prices in 1998. The telegraph didn’t blink; it just kept printing “1.20—psychological support now vaporware.”

Culturally, the medium is having a hipster afterlife. Tokyo’s Morse-code speakeasies—where you order a $27 negroni by tapping “..-. ..- -.-. -.- / — -.– / .-.. .. ..-. .”—are booked solid by coders nostalgic for an era they never lived through. Berlin clubs host “Telegraph Raves” where DJs modulate basslines via spark-gap transmitters, creating beats that can be heard in Iceland on the right night and possibly by aliens with poor taste. UNESCO, not wanting to miss the irony, just inscribed “Morse Literacy” on its Intangible Cultural Heritage list, sandwiched between Georgian polyphonic singing and the Mediterranean diet.

Human nature, of course, remains the same regardless of baud rate. Scammers in Lagos now run “419” frauds via shortwave Morse, promising lonely retirees in Florida a cut of nonexistent Nigerian railroad bonds. The International Telecommunication Union politely calls it “heritage cybercrime.” And every April 27—Morse Code Day—the North Korean embassy in London transmits the same six-word message: “JUCHE STRONK.” No one replies, but the Royal Signals Museum logs it dutifully, proof that propaganda, like rust, never sleeps.

And yet, in disaster zones from Haiti to Sulawesi, when fiber is down and satellites are jammed, the humble telegraph—powered by a car battery and sheer spite—still becomes humanity’s backchannel. Aid workers call it “the last honest mile.” Journalists call it “the only inbox dictators can’t subpoena.” Ham operators just call it Tuesday.

Conclusion? The telegraph is the cockroach of communications: ugly, indestructible, and likely to outlive both civilization and the cockroaches themselves. While we mortals upgrade to whatever gilded cage Silicon Valley sells next, those little beeps will still be skipping across the ionosphere, carrying everything from tsunami alerts to love notes, reminding us that the fastest way to move information is sometimes the slowest technology we forgot to kill.