Telewag trivia

SIR – In a letter featured in Did Anyone Else See That Coming ... ?, the latest collection of hitherto unpublished letters to The Telegraph, Richard Davies wonders why the paper was referred to by his late father, a veteran of the First World War, as The Telewag.

Before radio communication became the norm among fighting services, communication on land and at sea was by flag – initially using the semaphore alphabet and two flags; and, later, by Morse code using one. The dexterous communicators were called flag-waggers or wig-waggers. (In the Navy, they were bunting-tossers.)

There was even a chain of permanent wooden semaphore or telegraph towers between Portsmouth and the Admiralty in London at the time of the Battle of Trafalgar.

It is possible that, since The Telegraph was, like the optical telegraph before it, a sought-after means of exchanging news, those who benefited called it The Telewag. Peter Collett

Chichester, West Sussex