[GreenKeys] Western Union film

[nico de jong]

Hi All


Talking about Western Union  made me think of a competitor : Commercial

I worked in the telegrafph office in The Hague (Netherlands). A local 
office of Western UNion was located in Amsterdam ir thereabouts (12650 
WU NL on the dutch Gentex net), and Commercial was located in Rotterdam 
or in the vincinity (22106 CIAL NL).

WU's traffic came mostly from the Far East and Pacific as far as I 
remember. Commercial was from all over the world, but mainly business 
related telegrams.

Would anyone have some details on the Commercial operation?


73, Nico



On 2020-06-20 23:36, Richard Knoppow wrote:
> There have been some good books on the history of WU. One can find 
> system maps on the web. Note that WU was the first nationwide company. 
> People think it was a railroad but no railroad was more than regional. 
> WU predates the telephone company by about thirty years and it was 
> some time before Bell System/AT&T created a nationwide system. To me 
> it is fascinating history.
>
> On 6/20/2020 10:31 AM, Robert Nickels wrote:
>> On 6/19/2020 9:54 PM, Russ Miller wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> In addition, WU would lease capacity from AT&T when the need was 
>>> there. AT&T would also lease capacity from WU from time to time.
>>>
>>>
>>> WU has a limited local distribution network, in major cities, all 
>>> copper which was augmented by leased circuits from the local Bell 
>>> Company under a nationwide contrac
>>>
>> Thanks Russ and Jim.   My question was about their network in a broad 
>> sense, whether it was wireline or microwave, but the answer clearly 
>> is that Western Union indeed did build and maintain it's own 
>> infrastructure.
>>
>> I found a good paper that describes the history of the WU microwave 
>> relay system, including their negotiations with the Forest Service, 
>> here:
>>
>> https://historycooperative.org/journal/towers-for-telegrams-the-western-union-telegraph-company-and-the-emergence-of-microwave-telecommunications-infrastructure/ 
>>
>>
>> A research engineer for WU also wrote an article "Radio Beam 
>> Telegraphy" that includes photos of equipment and more details of the 
>> first multiplexing systems, which was published in the Oct. 1946 
>> issue of Railway Signalling magazine, that can be viewed on Google 
>> Books:
>>
>> https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/L4_mAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA666&dq=western+union+network+wireline 
>>
>>
>> The first article above also contains many interesting looking links 
>> for anyone interested.    Your comment about "copper" is pertinent 
>> because the 1946 article notes that in recent years all the iron wire 
>> in its network had been replaced with copper!
>>
>> 73,   Bob W9RAN
>>
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>