[GreenKeys] eBay item 3706596636 (Ends Mar-01-04 220920 PST) - Antique Western Union Telety

[jhaynes@alumni.uark.edu]

Actually I know as little about these things as anybody.  As Don says,
Western Union at some time (anybody know time frame?) had a run of
teleprinters built to their own design rather than buying from Teletype.
They used Underwood typewriter parts.  Probably the machines were intended
to use on tielines to customer offices, since they are much less rugged
than the Model 15.  A whole bunch of these machines went to deaf people
back when teletypewriters for the deaf required a teleprinter and W.U. was
getting rid of a lot of their old machines.

I wonder why W.U. did this.  Maybe they expected to save money, with
machines that would cost less than what Teletype was charging them for
Model 15s.  (This was long before the Model 32/33.)  Maybe they just
hated buying from Teletype because it was owned by AT&T and AT&T was
a competitor to W.U.  A lot of times W.U. had stuff built to their own
designs because nothing Teletype offered was what they wanted.  

I have a couple of the machines but no maintenance manual.  Wasn't 
somebody going to copy one for me?

They also made a tabletop cabinet, but the "mailbox" floor cabinets
seem to be more common.



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jhaynes at alumni dot uark dot edu