What would be an appropriate event for a singing telegram? I envision it would be ideal to tell someone something when you can’t or don’t choose to be there in person. You know, like telling a one night stand they might want to go to the doctor because you just got diagnosed with some STD.
And a-one, and a-two…
We don’t have time for bafflegab.
I’m sorry - hope you understand
Your traps been busy catching crabs.
So thank you for the one night stand.
See Doc about your lotus land. 
Mad Magazine
The best laid plans of mice and men
Sometimes require a swab - or ten.
FWIW, apparently Putin sent Trump a telegram today (2 Oct 2020).
By about 1990 they were pretty well ubiquitous though, even if they were the janky machines with the thermal paper, etc…
There have been huge leaps in telecommunication technology over the last century STOP
Yet how many people use their pocket computers for the app that is most like Western Union? STOP
Pretty easy to do with electronic communications too. But, sure. Maybe.
Faxing is still used, particularly in medical settings because it’s more secure, given it’s point-to-point, unlike email. So some obsolete technologies persist.
With a telegram, the recipient’s signature is on record, plus the date and time of delivery and the contents of the telegram (ᴛʜɪꜱ ɪꜱ ɴᴏᴛɪᴄᴇ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴡᴇ ʜᴇʀᴇʙʏ ᴄᴀɴᴄᴇʟ ᴏᴜʀ ᴄᴏɴᴛʀᴀᴄᴛ or similar). Nothing impossible to do with purely electronic communications, but the telegram seems straightforward.
Not really in a lot of circumstances. Let’s say you send me something electronically - you might be able to prove you sent it, but how do you prove I received it if I don’t want you to have proof? As far as I know, even if you request a “read” receipt, it’s still up to me to send it and (also as far as I know) there’s no rule presuming that a properly addressed email was received.
If you don’t want someone to have proof you received their message, why would you sign a telegram delivery?
Because otherwise you don’t know what’s in the message. It’s not like you get to read it and then decide you’re not going to sign the delivery slip.
Also, if you’re sending something to a company, it’s usually a pretty low-level person (like a receptionist) that signs for delivery of things.
Why couldn’t a digital solution would work for that case too?
You get an email that says: You have received a confidential message from etelegrams.com, click here and sign your name and we’ll show it to you.
It could in principle, but if you are trying to cancel a contract, you are better served by requiring a physical signature at the point of delivery, whether certified mail (return receipt required) or telegram.
In your example, if the recipient ignores the email, you’d be hard-pressed to argue that you sent the company a telegram.
If you don’t want someone to have proof of delivery you don’t sign. If you do sign for whatever reason then you don’t care if they get proof of delivery because they will get it. And even if you didn’t sign the delivery is made person to person, there is a witness to the transaction. There is a witness to your refusal to sign also if you want to go that route.
A telegram sent to a John Doe needs the signature of John Doe, not some low level employee at a company he may be associated with. Proof of delivery is only one of the services available, not always required, and it’s something that the post office can do also. The transmission is done almost instantly unlike the mail though. The speed and the person to person transaction was unique to the telegraph system. Only in the past few years have people become comfortable with online transactions, telegraphs were considered the most reliable means of long distance written communication in their day.
In my example of using a telegram to cancel a contract, I wasn’t sending it to John Doe. I sent it to the company itself at their address, and couldn’t care less who signed for it, so long as someone at the company did so.
Exactly. Because sending the notice by certified mail also met the contract requirements, I did that as well (and requested a return receipt for proof of delivery).
As I pointed out upthread, though, if I had been near the deadline and if it had been a weekend or after business hours, the only way I could have cancelled the contract within the provisions of the contract would have been via telegram (which the telegram company highlights in the promotion of their service).
I actually signed the contract on a Sunday, and then sent the telegram canceling the contract (along with an email for good measure) by the end of that same day. I then followed up with snail mail the next day (Monday).
In the hours after signing the contract, I read about a lot of people who missed the deadline to cancel, and the company didn’t cut them any slack.
I never actually received a telegram myself- but I know I have sent mail with a return receipt requested and received it back with proof that after multiple delivery attempts and notices left the recipient never claimed it. I assume if someone refused a telegram Western Union would have provided proof that it was refused. Which is very different from an email getting stuck in a spam filter without the recipient knowing about it.
Why did telegraph services last as long as they did?
Honestly, what appeals to me most about the telegraph was to save time and money by having (company wide) thick code books accessible to both the sender and receiver - where “The President is ill and we need to order more wine” might be abbreviated as “Spumante”. What appeals STOP to me about the telegram is the inclusion STOP of excessive punctuation.
Pony Express is very well known but most people don’t know it only lasted about a year 1860-1861 because telegraph wires were much faster and cheaper.