[CW] Question about marine radiograms

[Richard Knoppow]

     Thank you, this is very helpful. I was thinking of the 
period lets say up to the late 1940s. I assume the following. 
Someone sent a message from a ship to an address in, say, 
Chicago. The message would be sent by radio from the ship to a 
shore station, lets say WCC. WCC would send the message via 
Western Union to the addressee. WU would deliver it. The sender 
would pay a fee to the ship, to RCA for the shore station and a 
forwarding charge to WU.
  I think the same arrangement was used for cable messages.
    Some history of Mackay says that the Mackay company set up 
the first American owned cable to Europe and created Postal 
Telegraph partly so they would not be beholden to WU for relay 
services. WU acquired Postal in 1938, I think, giving them a 
total monopoly of domestic telegraph service. WU was probably ten 
times as large as Postal. At some point Mackay was acquired by 
ITT. There is a fair amount of history of ITT and of the Mackay 
companies on the web. I also have a book (buried at the moment) 
about Western Union. Fascinating since it was fought over by 
greedy financiers for a long time, perhaps to help them get 
control of railroads. It was the first nationwide business.
    Well, I am getting OT here since wire telegraph is not 
exactly CW.
    BTW, my old mentor, who had worked for Dollar Radio and Globe 
Wireless long ago pronounced Mackay as Makee. From the bios of 
Clarence and John Mackay that was evidently the way they 
pronounced their name.
    I love "deranged".
On 11/6/2018 12:10 PM, D.J.J. Ring, Jr. wrote:
> You're right, people could either contact Western Union or if they
> knew our telephone or telex number, they could send the message for a
> ship to us.  Remember the whole telegraph / radio system was upended
> around 1988.


-- 
Richard Knoppow
1oldlens1 at ix.netcom.com
WB6KBL