[GreenKeys] A Little More TWX History

[Jim Haynes]

On Tue, 26 Nov 2019, Harold Hallikainen wrote:
>
> I used to do contract work for Alden (I think that's the company name) in
> MA. They made wet paper fax machines for distributing weather maps to the
> FAA Flight Service Stations. This was linear FM over a phone line. A
> rotating drum with a helix on it provided horizontal scan while the paper
> was pulled up by another motor. The helix would pass current through the
> paper to turn it brown.

When I was working for Teletype we were tasked by AT&T to produce some
fax machines for a Long Lines government project.  I wasn't on the trip,
but some guys went to visit Alden and I think maybe we bought one of their
machines to try out.  They told how John Alden was very proud of his 
heritage, being a descendant of the John Alden of Mayflower fame.  But we
decided their machine was not rugged enough to satisfy the customer.

The other company in the business at that time was Hogan, located in New
York.  Mr. Hogan was the son of a Hogan who was very prominent in the 
early days of the I.R.E.  He used a similar wet paper process except his
was called catecohl and made gray marks instead of sepia.  Alden kept
saying their sepia process was safer chemically and was easier to read
than gray.

We didn't consider Western Union because they were committed to Teledeltos
paper and we were concerned about the fumes and such from that material.

So in the end we contracted with one of our suppliers, Dixon Automatic 
Tool of Rockford IL to build the fax machines.  The customer wanted both
a large-format machine for map-like material and a small format photo
quality machine.  Dixon made the large machine and I don't know whatever
was done about the small machine.

Around the same time, mid 1960s, Stewart-Warner was making a letter-size
wet paper fax machine.  Their intention was to compete with Western Union
by offering fax over the telephone dial network, using AT&T modems.
They imagined having agencies all over the country that could send and
receive fax messages for walk-in customers.  I guess nothing ever came of
it.