First Blogger Quits
Western Union sends its last telegram
Company halts renowned international communication service after 145 years.
February 1, 2006: 6:19 PM EST
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) – Western Union sent its final telegram message last Friday after 145 years of transcontinental — and international — communication.
The telegram section of the company’s web site says, “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.”
The company was founded to provide far-ranging message services, and created the first transcontinental message service in the United States in 1861 which was used to send coast-to-coast messages during the Civil War.
The company — now “Western Union Holdings” — was once known as “Western Union Telegraph Company.”
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.
Now primarily a financial services provider, Western Union specializes in electronic money transfers, e-mail and fax services with more than 100,000 locations worldwide.
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I have often wonder why Western Union didn’t create the World Wide Web. They were doing electronic communications since 1861. I think it is because they thought they were in the teletype business, much like the trains thought they were in the train business. Western Union was in the global communications business whether it knew it or not. And the trains were in the transportation business whether they liked it or not.
I knew Western Union was in the Global Communications Business back in 1968 when I first started using Teletype machines.
I think Steve Jobs knows that Apple Computer is in the entertainment business with the iPod and iTunes. It is certainly in the retail business with 125 stores and the online iTunes Music Store. Apple is also in the music creation business with GarageBand, Soundtrack and Logic Pro.
Today, Western Union is the Paypal of the Banking Industry, for people who don’t have computers. I guess banking is a good industry as well. but they could have been the Netscape, Google and Cisco of the WWW.
186K miles / second – It’s not just a good idea. Its the law.
