Telegrams once announced deaths, engagements, business deals, congratulations and condolences. Now, their end has come. After 145 years, Western Union stopped sending telegrams, discontinuing its Telegram and Commercial Messaging services on January 27, as cell phones and emails made the iconic communication channel obsolete, LiveScience and Business Week, among others, reported this week.

Begun in 1844 with Massachusetts artist-inventor Samuel Morse's first telegram - a Biblical quotation, "What hath God wrought!" - the first form of (relatively) instant messaging had survived the telephone, radio and fax machine. Delivered on paper, since 1933 it also came in the form of singing telegrams.

In the 1920s and '30s, Western Union had14,000 uniformed messenger boys and girls on foot and bicycle. Last year, it sent a mere 20,000 telegrams worldwide. It began closing down hand-delivery in 1972, but continued to take messages by phone and delivering them by next-day mail. It now focuses on wire transfers, prepaid telephone cards and other financial services.