Western Union is no longer offering telegram service, although the website still has a little “your message here” picture right next to the announcement that says they don’t offer this service.
I’m too young to have ever sent or received a telegram, and I have to wonder whether what Western Union was calling a “telegram” in recent years had anything to do with a telegraph.
I’m amazed that Western Union was offering anything that even resembled a telegram, but I’m also amazed that people are still using fax machines. A fax machine makes a crude scan of a document, dials-up another fax machine as though it were an analog phone, and then slowly transmits the image to another machine. All this usually happens within ten feet of perfectly functioning computer connected to a high speed global network. This is almost as ridiculous as using a cell phone to call Western Union to order a telegram.