'Lord Curzon's Notes on Persia' [‎581v] (1164/1386)

10 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION
wooden poles, the constant renewal of which in a comparatively treeless
country was a perpetual source of trouble, anxiety, and expense. Our
Convention and the Indo-European Company’s concession have both been
modified and their term extended for a lengthened period of years.
A whole lecture might be devoted to the history of the regulation of
international telegraphy, the necessity for which became gradually
apparent to all the States of Europe. In the framing and revising
of these regulations at the periodical international conferences, the
late Director-in-Chief of the Indo-European Telegraph Department,
Colonel Sir John Bateman-Champain, took a conspicuous and eminently
useful part. But this, as well as the question of tariffs, is too large
and complicated a subject to be more than hinted at on the present
occasion.
Of the efficiency attained by the telegraphic service between this
country and India, you may judge for yourselves by the few following
facts:—Some considerable time after through-communication had been
opened, a hope was expressed (in 1867, to the best of my memory) that
the service might eventually be so improved that telegrams would reach
their destination correctly and regularly within a maximum of three days
from their original dates. This opinion, however, was thought at the
time to be too Utopian. Messages between all parts of the United King
dom and all parts of India (not merely those between London and the
Presidency The name given to each of the three divisions of the territory of the East India Company, and later the British Raj, on the Indian subcontinent. towns) now reach their destinations within an average interval
between their reception at one end and their delivery at the other, of
less than an hour and a half. In an average of only one word in about
two hundred does even the most trivial mistake occur in transmission.
And it must be remembered that the telegrams are almost entirely either
in code or cipher, which, as compared with ordinary language, adds enor
mously to the chances of error, as well as to the time required for
transmission. Were this degree of speed and accuracy attained with a
small amount of traffic, it would still, I think, bear favourable comparison
with that of any telegraph system in the world. But the traffic to which
those averages apply amounts to the large total of nearly 1000 messages
a day.
Of the far-reaching effects which this constant stream of rapid com
munication has had, and has, on the Government, the commerce, and the
general condition of India, I shall not attempt to form an estimate. One
effect on this country is patent to all, viz., the greater and more widely-
spread knowledge of India, and the greater interest taken in her affairs.
Every noteworthy event is at once telegraphed to the press at home, and
in every Monday’s copy of the Times appears an exhaustive summary of
the week’s Indian news accompanied by such commentary as the events
seem to call for. It may perhaps surprise you to be told that those
interesting telegrams are altogether unpadded, and that even to the
punctuation—the use of inverted commas for instance—they are printed
absolutely verbatim.
The effect of our telegraph in Persia has been very considerable. By
it, and by the numerous other lines of which it has been the parent, the
powers of the local governors have been much curtailed and brought