[South Florida DX Association] Western Union Stops Sending Telegrams

Bill Marx bmarx at bellsouth.net
Wed Feb 1 21:43:21 EST 2006


>From the Greenkeys list.
-Bill W2CQ


Era Ends: Western Union Stops Sending Telegrams
By Robert Roy Britt
LiveScience Managing Editor
posted: 31 January 2006
10:17 pm ET

After 145 years, Western Union has quietly stopped sending telegrams.
On the company's web site, if you click on "Telegrams" in the left- 
side navigation bar, you're taken to a page that ends a technological  
era with about as little fanfare as possible:

"Effective January 27, 2006, Western Union will discontinue all  
Telegram and Commercial Messaging services. We regret any  
inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you for your loyal  
patronage. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact a  
customer service representative."

The decline of telegram use goes back at least to the 1980s, when  
long-distance telephone service became cheap enough to offer a viable  
alternative in many if not most cases. Faxes didn't help. Email could  
be counted as the final nail in the coffin.

Western Union has not failed. It long ago refocused its main business  
to make money transfers for consumers and businesses. Revenues are  
now $3 billion annually. It's now called Western Union Financial  
Services, Inc. and is a subsidiary of First Data Corp.

The world's first telegram was sent on May 24, 1844 by inventor  
Samuel Morse. The message, "What hath God wrought," was transmitted  
from Washington to Baltimore. In a crude way, the telegraph was a  
precursor to the Internet in that it allowed rapid communication, for  
the first time, across great distances.

Western Union goes back to 1851 as the Mississippi Valley Printing  
Telegraph Company. In 1856 it became the Western Union Telegraph  
Company after acquisition of competing telegraph systems. By 1861,  
during the Civil War, it had created a coast-to-coast network of lines.

Don R. House K9TTY
drhouse at nadcomm.com




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