[GreenKeys] Western Union Deskfax - eBay

[Geoff Fors]

W-U dumped those Desk Fax machines about 1970 from warehouses around the
country.  Out here they gave them away to some of the radio clubs.  We
actually got ours running and used them to send photos back and forth via
the UHF FM ham club repeater.  I believe these were popular enough that
there was a conversion article in the ARRL handbook and/or QST about the
same time.  Our conversion involved some wiring changes and addition of a
toggle switch, but the thing was, the machines as converted wouldn't sync
up, so that you never knew where your page would start on the paper sheet,
requiring scissors and tape to make a proper page.

These used, if I remember right, something called "L-48 Tele-deltose Paper"
and made a smoky stink when running, as the back side of the paper was
metalized and it printed by dragging a pulsed high voltage stylus across the
front of the paper, burning the image into it.  It wasn't too hard to get a
high voltage wallop from that stylus while loading the paper, either.

The paper sheets load on the drum and are held in place by a spring wire
garter.  I remember having some "Western Union Telegram" marked paper which
I quickly ran out of, then some blue paper which I think we made up from
paper sheets originally used with the AN/TXC-1 military fax printer.

There was also another WU machine like these but called the "Tele-Fax."  It
looked identical but printed positive images rather than negatives; at least
that's how we described them.

These machines were WU's attempt to enter the desktop telegram transmission
and reception market, which never worked out for some reason.  You can see
one on a secretary's desk in an early 1950's Hepburn and Tracy film.  Can't
recall the name.

Geoff
WB6NVH