[GreenKeys] Question regarding TWX and Dial TWX...

[Larry Tighe]

Thanks Jim and Don,

BUT, where do my RCA Global Model 15's fit into all this?  They have rotary 
dials on the accompanying box and a telephone line connection...2 wire.

Did RCA Global have the international business? Or, did they compete with 
W.U.?  I think my RCA Model 15's deserve recognition in this discussion  LOL

lar
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jim Haynes" <jhhaynes at earthlink.net>
To: "Larry Tighe" <larryradio at att.net>
Cc: <greenkeys at mailman.qth.net>; "Bryan Brodie" <b.brodie at vaporland.com>
Sent: Friday, April 23, 2010 10:30 AM
Subject: Re: [GreenKeys] Question regarding TWX and Dial TWX...


> On Fri, 23 Apr 2010, Larry Tighe wrote:
>
>> Hey Don! !
>>
>> Isn't there a "story" somewhere in that history that  a court required 
>> Bell
>> System to give up tty service to W.U.?  or maybe visa versa?
>>
>> lar
>
> This is a long, long story.
>
> Way back, after the Bell patent fight, W.U. agreed to stay out of the
> telephone business and AT&T agreed to stay out of the telegraph
> business.  I think it was Pac Bell at the time that was taking
> telegrams from the public, just as W.U. did.
>
> AT&T continued to supply circuits for private line telegraphy, as
> they could be derived from telephone circuits by means of composite
> sets.  A composite set is a set of low and high pass filters that
> separate voice and telegraph signals by virtue of the low frequency
> of the latter.  AT&T also set up some private-line TTY switching
> systems, typically for police use, before TWX.
>
> When AT&T introduced TWX it became an article of faith with W.U.
> people that AT&T was violating the agreement to stay out of the
> telegraph business.  Obviously AT&T did not think so; they were
> providing an entirely different kind of service from the store-and
> forward service to the general public that W.U. provided.  But
> W.U. (and Postal Telegraph) complained that TWX was "cream-skimming",
> that businesses large enough to use TWX would use it instead of
> sending telegrams through the telegraph companies or leasing private
> wire systems from them, leaving the telegraph companies to handle
> the less-profitable traffic from smaller volume users.
>
> I have some documents from the mid-1950s where W.U. was posturing to
> the FCC that there should be one voice carrier and one "record"
> carrier for the U.S., meaning they should have all the telegraph
> business.  As if the wires could tell what kind of traffic was
> passing over them.  And AT&T said they were not interested in selling
> TWX to WU and pointed out all the difficulties of separating TWX
> from the phone system of the day, such as all the equipment located
> in racks in telephone offices that would have to bd moved.
>
> Eventually W.U. brought Telex to the U.S., first in some big cities
> and then spreading it around.  I have always thought this was a mistake,
> since it put them into head-to-head competition with AT&T and AT&T
> owned all the local loops that W.U. needed to connect to their customers.
> But I've been told that Telex was quite profitable for W.U.
>
> W.U. kept yammering about the unfair competition from AT&T and that
> there should be one record carrier and eventually AT&T gave in and
> agreed to sell TWX to W.U.  I don't know whether either company
> realized at the time that the best days of TWX were already past;
> the growth was in services like Data Phone that would transmit data
> over the AT&T network from telephones.
>
>
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