Reply
Thu 2 Feb, 2006 12:09 pm
Era Ends: Western Union Stops Sending Telegrams
By Robert Roy Britt
LiveScience Managing Editor
posted: 31 January 2006
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.
Other company highlights:
1866: Introduced the first stock ticker.
1871: Introduced money transfers.
1884: Became one of the original 11 stocks tracked by the Dow Jones Average.
1914: Introduced the first consumer charge card.
1964: Began using a transcontinental microwave beam to replace land lines.
1974: Launched Westar I, the first U.S. dedicated communications satellite.
On Jan. 26, the last day you could send a telegram, First Data announced it would spin Western Union off as an independent, publicly traded company.
Telegrams either were the portent of wonderful or terrible news. You sent them to a wedding that you couldn't attend to wish the couple happiness, or you got a telegram when someone died. I think that people would get very nervous, when they saw the Western Union Man coming up their walk!
I sent two and received one. Western Union and telegrams had more usage and importance prior to the invention of the telephone. Something of a sad passing, but I will most likely get over it.
Only one. My eldest sister's 40th birthday. It was a nastygram which she blasted me for. When Western Union pulled into her driveway she thought she'd won the lottery of Publisher's Clearing House. It was just little ole me bearing good wishes on her aging body. hehe, although now that I'm 50 it's no longer quite so funny.
Sturgis- Even after the telephone, people used telegrams for important stuff. It was sort of like a snail mail birthday card somehow being more important than an E Mail card.
BBB
My family received the news of my older brother's death by two officers knocking on our front door. The Western Union man was right behind them with the Army's telegram.
My brother was an Army pilot, a test pilot in 1947, who died when his and two other planes were sent up to gather data during a hurricane about to hit landfall in Florida. Lightening struck his plane, caught fire, burning his legs. My brother bailed out at the high altitude he was flying and suffocated before he reached oxygen. His death at 27 caused the military to develop the altitude sensor release parachute that would not open until low enough to have oxygen.
BBB
JB
J_B wrote:I'm sorry, BBB.
At least some good came of his death and saved the lives of future pilots.
Why does someone have to die before obvious things are fixed?
BBB
Because the nature of man is to be lazy and trifling about some things until they're really broken. Like the coal mines in West Virginia. 16 people have died in less than two months and only now someone finally says "Maybe we need to stop production for a minute and take a look at things..."
As a kid, I received a few telegrams. My father was away tending to his fathers' passing and burial and sent a telegram to me on the day of my eighth grade graduation. It was truly part of a thrilling day.
I think, I've only send one real telegram - which actually started as a Maritime Radio Station call from board of my ship but arrived at my parents as a telegram :wink:
Besides that, of course those 'greeting telegrams', which weren't considered to be 'real' telegrams here.
Nice site, btw:
Internet Telegrams
Stumble It!
Tweet This
Bookmark on Delicious
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace