Can someone still send a message via an official telegram? If not in the U.S., perhaps elsewhere?
You can still send telegrams via Western Union. Not much demand for sending telegrams in the U.S., but their wire transfer service (which is money, with or without a message) still keeps them somewhat busy.
The fax machine killed the telegram.
I thought that the telegram was killed by the telephone. Once as a joke I tried to send a telegram to my girlfriend at the time (I forget through which company, probably Western Union) and the telegram company called her and gave her the message over the phone! I was thinking that a man in a neat, trim telegrapher uniform was going to dash to her house.
Telegrams serve legal functions that telephones cannot – telegrams are considered “written” communication while a telephone call is “oral”. Prior to the fax machine, it was quite common for people to use telegrams to acknowledge offers, contracts, and so forth.
It’s probably fair to say that the telephone maimed the telegram, and the fax machine put it out of its misery. 