After 145 years, Western Union stops sending telegrams

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George P Burdell

Lifer
Aug 25, 2004
11,151
1
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http://www.livescience.com/technology/060131_western_union.html

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.
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firewall

Platinum Member
Oct 11, 2001
2,099
0
0
Heard about that. New technology phases out the old one. It is a competitive practice.
 
mugs

mugs

Lifer
Apr 29, 2003
48,920
46
91
If they announced it before doing it, I bet they would have gotten a bunch of people sending telegrams just for the sake of being able to say they sent a telegram.
 
PingSpike

PingSpike

Lifer
Feb 25, 2004
21,758
602
126
Western Union...the same morons that refused to buy Bell's telephone from him for $100,000 because they thought no one would want it. Oh man, I bet they'll never get over that one.
 
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George P Burdell

Lifer
Aug 25, 2004
11,151
1
81
Originally posted by: yobarman
What the hell is a telegram?
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back in the old days, people used to send messages to each other by post which took forever, or pigeon, which was not very reliable. so somebody put electricity and long cables together to send short messages like this one by morse code (this was way before the telephone). It's the first chapter in the history of electronic communication.
 
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Goosemaster

Lifer
Apr 10, 2001
48,775
3
81
Originally posted by: George P Burdell
Originally posted by: Linflas
--. --- --- -.. -... -.-- .
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appropriate
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