Telegraph History: "Telegram for America" circa 1956 Western Union 20min
more at "
History, technology and 1950s-era practice of the telegraphy business."
Public domain film from the
Library of Congress Prelinger Archive, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
Telegraph (from
Greek: tele τηλε "far", and graphein γραφειν "writing") is the long-distance transmission of messages without the physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus semaphore is a method of telegraphy whereas pigeon post is not
.
...In the 19th century, the harnessing of electricity brought about the means to transmit signals via electrical telegraph. The advent of radio in the early
1900s brought about radiotelegraphy and other forms of wireless telegraphy
. In the Internet age, telegraphic means developed greatly in sophistication and ease of use, with natural language interfaces that hide the underlying code, allowing such technologies as electronic mail and instant
Telegraphs as such have existed in
Europe from as early as
1792, then in form of a semaphore line, or optical telegraph, that sent messages to a distant observer through line-of-sight signals. In 1837,
American artist-turned inventor
Samuel F. B. Morse conducted the first successful experiment with an electrical recording
n 1851, the
New York and
Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company was organized in
Rochester, New York by
Hiram Sibley and others, with the goal of creating one great telegraph system with unified and efficient operations.
Meanwhile,
Ezra Cornell had bought back one of his bankrupt companies and renamed it the New York &
Western Union Telegraph Company.
Originally fierce competitors, by 1855 both groups were finally convinced that consolidation was their only alternative for progress. The merged company was named
The Western Union Telegraph Company at
Cornell's insistence, and
Western Union was born.
Western Union bought out smaller companies rapidly, and by
1860 its lines reached from the
East Coast to the
Mississippi River, and from the
Great Lakes to the
Ohio River. In 1861 it opened the first transcontinental telegraph. In 1865 it formed the
Russian American Telegraph in an attempt to link
America to Europe, via
Alaska, into
Siberia, to
Moscow. (This project was abandoned in 1867.)
The company enjoyed phenomenal growth during the next few years. Its capitalization rose from $385,700 in 1858 to $41 million in 1876. However it was top-heavy with stock issues, and faced growing competition from several firms, especially the
Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company--itself taken over by financier
Jay Gould in 1875. In 1881
Gould took control of Western Union.
It introduced the first stock ticker in 1866, and a standardized time service in
1870. The next year,
1871, the company introduced its money transfer service, based on its extensive telegraph network. In 1879, Western Union left the telephone business, having lost a patent lawsuit with
Bell Telephone Company. As the telephone replaced the telegraph, money transfer would become its primary business.
When the
Dow Jones Transportation Average stock market index for the
New York Stock Exchange (
NYSE) was created in 1884, Western Union was one of the original eleven all-American companies tracked.
By
1900 Western Union operated a million miles of telegraph lines and two international cables.
20th century
The company continued to grow, acquiring more than
500 smaller competitors. Its monopoly power was almost complete in 1943 when it bought
Postal Telegraph,
Inc., its chief rival.
In
1914 Western Union offered the first charge card for consumers; in 1923 it introduced teletypewriters to join its branches.
Singing telegrams followed in 1933, intercity fax in 1935, and commercial intercity microwave communications in 1943. In
1958, it began offering
Telex service to customers in
New York City. Western Union introduced the '
Candygram' in the
1960s, a box of chocolates accompanying a telegram featured in a commercial with the rotund
Don Wilson. In 1964, Western Union initiated a transcontinental microwave system to replace land
Western Union became the first American telecommunications corporation to maintain its own fleet of geosynchronous communication satellites, starting in
Due to declining profits and mounting debts, Western Union slowly began to divest itself of telecommunications-based assets starting in the early