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Don’t worry, they still do money transfers.[:)] They just quit the telegram part of their business.[:(]
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I was wondering about that, I would have thought that was a dying business, too. With the prevalence of ATM’s, I would think they would mostly be for larger amounts of money, since the maximum a person can usually get out of an ATM is limited to 200 or 300 dollars (unless you’re in a resort spot, Disney World, or Vegas!).
Wonder how many people still know Morse code, I suppose there’s a enthusiast group for that. My grandfather, a dispatcher back when, used to sit around and unconsciously, I think, tap out Morse code with his foot. Either that or perhaps he was sending subliminal messages.[8)]
I went to check it out, because they were mentioned in the same article as WU, apparently they send out about 200 a month, but it’s more of a novelty than anything else.
Business must be good since the article came out, seems they have stopped excepting new telegrams for the time being due to high traffic volumes…
This is kind of neat, they show on the website what the telegram will look like when you send it… I was curious to see it, since I’ve never actually seen one or sent one.
The act of money transfer is not like ATM’s of money disbursal. WU does a huge and thriving business in domestic and international money transfer, such as remittances of migrant Mexcans in the U.S. back home to Mexico. If you’re looking for a competitor to money transfer, it would be something like PayPal, except most people prefer the security of wire transfers.
Glad to see many morse operators still around
I was with CP telecomm’ns in the 1950’s ’
which later joined with CN to become CNCP Telecommns.
I was in the main office in Montreal & about 40 % of morse
traffic was rail related and about 60% public telegrams,
or newspaper items, We used to send a morse operator
to the Montreal Forum to send the sports announcers reports
to a Montreal newspaper. CP and CN divested themselves
from the telecommunications depts & CNCP then eventually
regrouped into a company similar to Western Union.
I still remember the morse code. when visiting the Pennsylvania
Railroad Museum in Strassburg, there was a replica of a station
with a recording of a morse sounder & I could still understand
it pretty well
most morse oprs would put an empty tobaco tin behind
their sounder and it gave a resounant sound to the dits & dahs.
I work in an office that has Western Union Services and today they still need to come into the 21st Century as they do not yet use word.
The majority of the business today is money transfers. Our office being in California deals with large amounts of money being transferred to Mexico by the migrant workers to their families back home. In fact on Fridays and Saturdays at times they are lined up out the door.
It is inteesting to see where money is transferred to I have personally WU money transfers to ireland, England, France, Germany Phillipines, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt come immediatly to mind. At the same time we have received money from all parts of the world for people. It really amazes me that the money transferred to Mexico must amount to Billions each year. Don’t think their economy could survive without the Yankee dollar.
Yes they went to hubs and through as many hubs as needed until routed to the office responsible for the delivery. When I worked there it was all manual switching as the messages arrived in a hub on reperferator tape (paper with holes punched in the strips) and someone would take that tape and put it into another transmitter to route it to the next hub or final delivery office. There the message came out on strips of gummed paper which was pasted to the telegraph form. This is why it took a few minutes for a message to reach the destination office and at the destination office delivery was attempted by telephone or physical delivery as appropriate. Physical delivery obviously would wait until a messenger was available. Messengers were out delivering continuously and timed on their trips.
Later the printer (s) actually printed the message on the form. I suspect at the
end the hub switches were also electronic.
I always wondered about routing telegraph messages. Let’s say you’re with a railroad in the 19th century, before perforated tapes. Also let’s say the line goes through stations A to B to C to D. Would messages going from A to D have to be repeated manually by B and C? If traffic was high enough would a company also build a direct connection between A and D, thus accounting for the many lines you see on telegraph poles? What was the maximum distance of a line in the 19th century?
G’day, Y’all,
Funny that yesterday I finished reading William Saroyan’s “The Human Comedy” about a youngster working after school as a telegram delivery boy and today I find that there is no longer such a service. How does the military now notify parents or spouses of their loved one’s death during time of war?
Yes, many years ago I did use the Western Union Mailgram service, once with a message to friends in Corvallis, Ore. and one to Eastman Kodak in Palo Alto, Calif.; but, alas, I never did actually send a telegram.
For a number of years my favorite aunt and uncle would send me birthday greetings via Western Union telegram. In fact, I think it came on a specially decorated telegram blank with the actually message printed with purple ink on yellow strips of paper that were subsequently glued to the telegram paper. They filed the message either in Mount Prospect (where they lived) or in Chicago, Ill. (where uncle worked) and it traveled just a very short way to our home in Barrington. To this day I remember how special it felt to receive a telegram.
In college the president of the local Mensa club was an electrical engineer who thought that the sun rose and set each day over the affairs of the mighty Western Union Telegraph Company. The highlight of his college experience centered around his evenings spent working at the W.U. Chicago office. If you’re reading this, Joe Sveda, please let me know.
During February 1971 I was talking with the Santa Fe Railway agent in Coolidge, Kans. when all of a sudden his telegraph sounder came to life. He spun around in his office chair, slapped a Western Union telegram blank into his ancient Remington, and pounded a few clicks back on his speed key. A few seconds later his sounder came to life again, and as the continuous chatter of dots-and-dashes broadcast out of the sounder, he faithfully copied the message. When finished he clicked back something short, pulled the finished telegram out of his typewriter, and phoned the recipient requesting that he pick up his message. The telegram was addressed to the local Episcopal vicar, but beyond that I didn’t know the contents of the message.
Because Coolidge had such a low volume of telegraph traffic, Western Union did not want to spend the money to install teletype equipment ther
Woman answers doorbell and opens door.
Messenger: Western Union Telegram, Ma’am.
Housewife: Great, I’ve always wanted a singing telegram.
Messenger: No, it’s just a regular telegram.
Woman pleads and messenger finally relents.
Messenger: DUM DE DUM DUM DUM. YOUR SISTER ROSE IS DEAD.
–from a New York Times article recalling the telegram era
(Not certain which smilie is appropriate.)