What humans will do to save themselves from typing a few characters: LOL. ROTFL. TTYL. <3. BRB. Universal sentiments and actions become encoded.

Well, imagine that each character had to be tapped down the line in Morse code. Telegraph operators had even more incentive to cut down on letters than did even the T9 texters of yore.

And so they came up with codes to communicate the things that they needed to say often. These were first codified by Walter P. Phillips into what became known as the Phillips Code in 1879. (It was updated several times, the last I found in 1975.)

Nearly all of these codes are now obsolete. But there is a small group of hobbyists who keep a few them alive. Amateur radio enthusiasts still use at least a couple of these abbreviations to this day as detailed by Glen Zook, call sign K9STH, in a widely reproduced brief history that relies on a 1934 Navy bulletin on the origins of '73.'

WIRE- Preference over everything except 95

1- Wait a moment

2- Important business

3- What time is it?

4- Where shall I go ahead?

5- Have you businessfor me?

6- I am ready

7- Are you ready?

8- Close your key; ckt is busy

9- Close your key for priority business (wire chief, dspr, etc.)

10- Keep this ckt closed

12- Do you understand?

13- I understand

14- What is the weather?

15- For you and and other to copy

17- Lightning here

18- What is the trouble?

19- Form 19 train order

21- Stop for meal

22- Wire test

23- All copy

24- Repeat this back

25- Busy on anr wire

26- Put on gnd wire

27- Priority, very important

28- Do you get my writing?

29- Private, deliver in sealed envelope.

30- No more -end

31- Form 31 train order

32- I understand that I am to .........

33- Car report (Also, answer is paid for)

34- Msg for all officers

35- You may use my signal to ans this

37- Diversion (Also, inform all interested)

39- Important, with priority on thru wire. (Also, sleep-car report)

44- Answer promptly by wire

73- Best regards

88- Love and kisses

91- Supt's signal

92- Deliver promptly

93- Vice pres. & gen. mgr's signals

95- President's signal

134- Who is at the key?

The list—a decidedly non-sexy counterpart to the telegraph's sexytime abbreviations—is mostly dedicated to basic traffic direction: stopping, going, clearing wires, assigning importance, etc. But 73 and 88 are different. They are ways of compressing sentiment, and helpful, I'm sure, in sending messages quickly across the wire.

Put another way: 88 was the fastest possible way to transmit love. It was the emoji heart of its day. (It's something else today, sadly.)

Humans now have zillions of ways of abbreviating our emotions for easier transmission along the network.

And way up the evolutionary tree, at the beginning of the electrical era, we find this common ancestor, 88.