[GreenKeys] Western Union Desk Fax Machines

[COURYHOUSE at aol.com]

yes ... part of communications history..... 
we have a great display showing just about anything and everything to  
automate and office except some of these! Even have early wax cylinder  
Dictaphone machines!

Ed# _www.smecc.org_ (http://www.smecc.org/)  



 
 
In a message dated 2/18/2013 1:19:53 P.M. Mountain Standard Time,  
teletypeparts at aol.com writes:

I worked on the Deskfax at WU in the late 60's  and early  70's.  There was 
one model that went to WU central office and it would  send or receive and 
this was the most common one.  I saw a few that would  go to another model 
of the same type over a phone line without going thru WU  central office.  
Wish I could remember the model  numbers.  

Wayne


-----Original  Message-----
From: Geoff Fors <Geoff at wb6nvh.com>
To: greenkeys  <greenkeys at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Mon, Feb 18, 2013 1:35  pm
Subject: [GreenKeys] Western Union Desk Fax Machines


W-U seems to have cleaned out a warehouse of those fax machines in  
California about 1970-71 as someone offered a truckload of them to hams at 
 something like $ 10 each via notices to radio clubs.  I traveled to San 
Jose 
 to get one, where there was a fellow with a U-Haul truck unloading them in 
a 
 parking lot, and a line of hams carrying them off.
 
 There were two varieties of machine, Deskfax and Telefax.  Most were 
 Deskfax.  The Telefax made a positive image while the Deskfax a negative, 
at 
 least as we were able to configure them over radio.  The mod involved 
adding 
 a toggle switch and some wiring.  There was a messy red ink roller which 
 marked outgoing telegrams to indicate they had been sent, which was one of 
 the things you removed when you installed the mod.  I recall a rather 
 extensive modification and construction article about these units in a 
 contemporary ARRL or E&E radio amateur's handbook.  We used them on 440 
MHz 
 although the mods I made didn't allow the pages to synch up and the images 
 would usually be split somewhere.
 
 Under certain circumstances you could get a shock from the high voltage 
 printing stylus, since the back of the paper was metalized.  The stylus 
was 
 a thin piece of wire like a bristle from a wire brush.  The machines gave 
 out some smoke and a stink when "printing" a page.
 
 There was a Hepburn-Tracy movie in the early 1950's which shows one of 
these 
 sitting on a desk in an office.
 
 Most of the these got junked out years ago when the fascination subsided. 
 There must be some still lying around in attics and garages though.
 
 Geoff
 WB6NVH 




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