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[filkertom]

Samuel F. B. Morse was born on this date in 1791. He's best known for creating the Morse Code, the first electrically carried communication system. His first message was, "What hath God wrought?" which demonstrates why there are engineers over here and tech writers over there because how FRICKIN' BRAIN DAMAGED is it to send YOUR VERY FIRST TEST MESSAGE in Olde English dialect?

And that's why your first computer program prints "HELLO WORLD" to the screen. The End.

So, you have 140 characters with which to send The Most Important Message You Will Ever Send To Anybody. What is it?

Alternately, what are your favorite joke telegrams? You know the type: "The message is as follows. Stop. No, you idiot, keep writing. Stop. Dammit, don't do that! Stop."

Comments

[ruisseau.livejournal.com]

The pen is poisoned. Stop. Shit. Stop. Wrong pen. Fullstop.

[phillip2637.livejournal.com]

I don't have anything creative coming to mind, but the character limit reminds me of a favorite Gahan Wilson cartoon:
Hand-painted sign at the beach says, "Beware of the...." (Smeared line trails off the edge.)

[delazan.livejournal.com]

A skeleton walks into a bar and asks for a beer and a mop...

[r-caton.livejournal.com]

A fellow with bloodstained hands and a white coat is standing by a sign saying BEWARE OF THE.
He says to a bemused onlooker "we haven't finished him yet"

[realinterrobang.livejournal.com]

"What hath God wrought" is Early Modern English. If it were in Old English, the first word would have been "Hwæt..." I don't even know that Morse Code has an option for "æ." :)

For what it's worth (typed "wroth," which is actually apropos), speaking as a technical writer, technical writers exist primarily to annoy programmers and engineers, and secondarily because we've managed to convince people to adopt ISO standards, which are the greatest technical writer make-work programme ever devised.

I don't know about calling Morse "Brain Damaged"

[capplor.livejournal.com]

Compare with other great first messages "Mr Watson, come here; I want you" and "One small step for a man; One giant leap for mankind" "D D D D" (points for remembering who/what for that one) and I'd say it comes squarely in the middle.

Re: I don't know about calling Morse "Brain Damaged"

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

oh, come on. That one doesn't deserve bonus points. Well, ok, maybe for the young whippersnappers what don't remember what records are, nor ever used 300 baud...

Re: I don't know about calling Morse "Brain Damaged"

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

At least Bell's message was a command. At least the first part of it. The second part was the very first gay porn.

Re: I don't know about calling Morse "Brain Damaged"

[stevemb.livejournal.com]

Bell's message? I thought it was Sherlock Holmes' message when he came out of the closet.

Re: I don't know about calling Morse "Brain Damaged"

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

No, that would be "Dr. Watson". ;)

Re: I don't know about calling Morse "Brain Damaged"

[capplor.livejournal.com]

What Robin (& just about everybody else) is forgetting is that Morse was at one end of the DC/Baltimore line & an aide was at the other. A semi-random Senator was asked to pick out the first message & he opened the Bible haphazardly & put his finger onto a verse.

That is how that message got to be chosen at noon, on the 23rd of May, 1844.

Re: I don't know about calling Morse "Brain Damaged"

[alverant.livejournal.com]

I have to disagree. Morse's message "What hath God wrought?" has a negative slant to it. It's as if he regrets his invention and that faster communication was a bad thing. That's the kind of quote I'd expect when the first atomic bomb was detonated.

Re: I don't know about calling Morse "Brain Damaged"

[capplor.livejournal.com]

Nah. For both negative & pretentious we have "I am become death, and destroyer of worlds"

(*Disclaimer: All quotes are from memory. Exact wording & puctuation may vary, but sense is retained)

Re: I don't know about calling Morse "Brain Damaged"

[alverant.livejournal.com]

Well vaporizing thousands of people at once is a negative thing to do (even if necessary). How does that relate to faster communication? Why was Morse so disturbed about when his invention worked?

Re: I don't know about calling Morse "Brain Damaged"

[arensb.livejournal.com]

Because he could already dimly foresee spam, Nigerian princes, and 24-hour cable news channels.

Re: I don't know about calling Morse "Brain Damaged"

[mathmuffin.livejournal.com]

The line is from the King James Version of the Bible, Numbers 23:22-23, and is very positive:
God brought them out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of an unicorn. Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any divination against Israel: according to this time it shall be said of Jacob and of Israel, What hath God wrought!

King Balak had hired the sorcerer Balaam to curse the people of Israel with an enchantment. Instead, God forced Balaam to bless and praise them. Balaam is amazed that these descendants of Jacob, a mob of former slaves turned into hardy wilderness warriors, could not be stopped even by magic.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

The first thing that comes to mind is Hal's last message:

"ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE USE THEM TOGETHER USE THEM IN PEACE"

105 characters not counting the quotes.

[akawil]

"Ignore previous telegram; all may yet be well"

[liddle-oldman.livejournal.com]

Robert Benchley, arriving in Venice: STREETS FULL OF WATER. PLEASE ADVISE.

[ericcoleman]

Ya beat me to it ...

[ericcoleman]

When he was in Venice, Robert Benchley sent Dorothy Parker a telegram that said "Streets filled with water. Please advise''

Cary Grant's reply to a telegram that asked "how old Cary Grant" was "old Cary Grant fine, how you?"

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

140 characters?

I will need to think about that one. Hmm.

[renquestor.livejournal.com]

-.- -.-. ----. .. ...- ..-

[arensb.livejournal.com]

Your ham radio identifier (or handle, or whatever it's called)?

That's a call sign.

[capplor.livejournal.com]

"Entry level" I don't really know what they're called anymore, but no higher than "General" class.

Re: That's a call sign.

[gan-chan.livejournal.com]

Actually you can keep your original Novice callsign all the way up to Extra class license, if you really want. There's no obligation to change as you move up. Though many choose to. I knew a few folks that stuck with their Novice or Tech callsigns all the way up.

73 DE N8PMU

[renquestor.livejournal.com]

Callsign is KC9IVU.

Chat rooms

[archiver-tim.livejournal.com]

I was interesting to learn that soon after telegraph lines were run, chat rooms were created. People (usually guys) in London would be gathered in a room with a telegraph operator, trading messages with people gathered in another room, in Berlin or Paris, just for the fun of sending messages, not for business or one-to-one messageing.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

The most important message I will ever send to anybody? To my partner and children: "I love you very much." Doesn't take very many characters.

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

Somebody beat me to the Cary Grant 'gram. Two other favorites:

General Sir Charles Napier, reporting on his conquest of the principality of Sind: "PECCAVI" ("I have sinned").

A notable astronomer (maybe Lowell?) responding to "IS THERE LIFE ON MARS STOP SEND 500 WORDS STOP": "NOBODY KNOWS" x250.

(As an aside: I was vacationing in Italy in 1980, and passed through Bologna shortly after the terrorist attack on the railway station. I telegrammed home to reassure my family, and manfully refrained from sending "AM SAFE NO BOLOGNA".)

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

Save the date: MTH XX, XXXX. Getting married. Sending out invitations now.

[sazettel.livejournal.com]

Favorite telegram story:

Mark Twain made a bar bet with a friend that he could get all the officials in a small Indiana town to leave simultaneously. Friend took the bet. By morning, all the elected officials were gone.

Friend, "How did you DO that?"

Turns out Twain had sent them all the same telegram. "Flee! All is discovered!"

Actually

[capplor.livejournal.com]

The first public telegraph message was "ready" See above for what happened next.

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

My favourite joke telegram of all time is one you send to someone to induce a nervous breakdown. It reads:

"Ignore previous message stop All may yet be well stop"

I don't need 140 characters to say 'I love you', and that's the most important message I will ever send to anybody. I try to send it to the people for whom it applicable as often as I can.

[bschilli.livejournal.com]

From the frugal, since we have ten words:

Father died Thursday. Funeral Monday. White Sox 7 Tigers 3

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

Most Important Message:

"Your time on Earth is limited. You don't know how long it is. Chase your dreams NOW. Do the fun stuff NOW. Now is all you have."

My favorite telegram joke is from pre-WW2:

Staff of admiral commanding to USS Doesntmatterwhichship; "Regarding inspection of your ship: good."

Admiral commanding, after he gets back to the office from the actual inspection: "Regarding inspection of your ship: please append to previous message the word, 'God.'"

[saganth.livejournal.com]

How about "SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE"?

[jcw-da-dmg.livejournal.com]

"We apologise for the inconvenience. Don't Panic."

[dan-ad-nauseam.livejournal.com]

ADVISE CAPTAIN WHISKY SUPPLY EXHAUSTED STOP

[arensb.livejournal.com]

There's an old Russian joke about a young man who goes to Paris and spends all his money on wine, women, and song. The telegraph office doesn't send telegrams in Russian, so he writes

Six joues baise chi chat.

("Six cheeks kiss fancy cat". Read out loud, it sounds like Russian for "I'm sitting here without a dime.")

He gets a telegram back from his father, which reads

Nous ici dit.

("We here says". Sounds like Russian for "So keep on sitting.")

[palenoue.livejournal.com]

First twitter message to aliens, "There's much to be done. Meet with me for details" or "Are you pondering what I'm pondering?"

First message to myself after I create time machine "Don't slack off just because it works, you still have to invent it."

[ravenclaw-eric.livejournal.com]

An exchange between a foreign correspondent and his employer, when trans-oceanic messages cost mucho bux per word:

"Why nonews?"

"Nonews goodnews."

"Nonews nojob."

"Upstick job asswise."

This exchange, BTW, was cited as a forerunner of George Orwell's "Newspeak" in 1984.

[r-caton.livejournal.com]

There was a message from a high ranker to his aide at Hiroshima
"Seize for me high ground"
the reply?
"Negative. The atomic bomb leaves no high ground"

and for teh funnie,
a service man cables back to camp from his honeymoon
"Request extension of leave. It's lovely here"
reply from C.O:
"Request Denied. It's lovely anywhere"

[braider.livejournal.com]

"...and never, ever. Stop."

[ipslore.livejournal.com]

I think I remember an English playwright (Oscar Wilde, maybe, or George Bernard Shaw, or somebody like that) who wanted to know how his play was doing so he sent a telegram to his agent consisting of a single character: "?"
The agent responded with "!".

[rickvs.livejournal.com]

Dunno if this one actually happened or not, but it's always tickled me:


'Stop sending surface to air missiles. Send surface to aircraft missiles.'
- military cable from Egypt to USSR

[dan-ad-nauseam.livejournal.com]

An exchange of letters between Hugo and his publisher, regarding the sales of Les Miz:

Hugo: ?
Publisher: !

[james-rayner.livejournal.com]

"For Man has earned the right to hold his planet against all comers by virtue of occaisonally producing someone completely batshit insane."