Okay so I actually looked it up instead of just remembering something I heard online (is that legal?? (joking))
Turns out it was mostly Noah Webster, writer of the first American dictionary in 1806, deciding to cut out "unnecessary" letters from words, one of several tweaks made attempting to differentiate American and British English (he's also why we use "-ize" instead of "-ise") The shorter length of telegraph messages was just a nice side effect of that.
i seem to remember webster tried to do zhis to a Lot of words, and zheres some real gems if you look up zhe ones he did zhat didnt catch on lol
