Telegraph Office - Calcutta

It is hard to overestimate the importance of the telegraph, introduced in 1840 to the Raj, as this grand edifice dedicated to the new medium and constructed in the 1870s suggests. Megan Easton Ellis writes: "This innovation transformed trade, railway schedules, industrial corporations, warfare and of course newspapers. A brief recital of communication timings demonstrates the irruptive powers of the telegraph. For instance, in 1840, sending a message from Bombay to London took five weeks. In 1868, a telegraph sent from Calcutta to Karachi took 17 hours and 48 minutes to transmit. By 1870, the same message transmitted in a blistering speed of 4 hours and 43 minutes. In 1875, a telegraph was transmitted from London to Bombay in five minutes. With the opening of the Red Sea line, international communication via telegraph between India and Britain became dependable. Jawaharlal Nehru later proclaimed the telegraph had been the 'herald of the New Age.'" (Print and the Urdu Public, 2021, p. 64)