A Western Union telegram photographed in 1923 Library of Congress I’ve never received a telegram. This realization, when it occurred to me recently, made me feel inexplicably nostalgic. There are, after all, plenty of technological rituals in which I’ve never participated. I haven’t taken a daguerreotype, or asked a switchboard operator to connect me to a phone number with letters in it, or fired up a Victrola for some sweet tunes on the ole phonograph.