TELECOM Digest Thu, 2 Feb 2006 14:52:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 50 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Western Union STOP Ends Telegram Service (P. Solomon Banda) Western Union Stops Sending Telegrams (harold@hallikainen.com) Era Ends: Western Union Stops Sending Telegrams (Monty Solomon) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: P. Solomon Banda Subject: Western Union STOP Ends Telegram Service Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2006 02:22:28 -0600 Western Union -STOP- Ends Telegram Service By P. SOLOMON BANDA, Associated Press Writer For more than 150 years, messages of joy, sorrow and success came in signature yellow envelopes hand delivered by a courier. Now the Western Union telegram is officially a thing of the past. The company formed in April 1856 to exploit the hot technology of the telegraph to send cross-country messages in less than a day. It is now focusing its attention on money transfers and other financial services, and delivered its final telegram on Friday. "The decision was a hard decision because we're fully aware of our heritage," Victor Chayet, a spokesman for the Greenwood Village-based company, said Wednesday. "But it's the final transition from a communications company to a financial services company." Several telegraph companies that eventually combined to become Western Union were founded in 1851. Western Union built its first transconti- nental telegraph line in 1861. "At the time it was as incredible and astonishing as the computer when it first came out," said Tom Noel, a history professor at the University of Colorado at Denver. "For people who could barely understand it, here you had the magic of the electric force traveling by wire across the country." In 1994, Western Union Financial Services was acquired by First Financial Management Corp. which First Data Corp. bought for $7 billion the following year. Last week, First Data said it would spin Western Union off as a separate company. Telegrams reached their peak popularity in the 1920s and 1930s when it was cheaper to send a telegram than to place a long distance telephone call. People would save money by using the word "stop" instead of periods to end sentences because punctuation was extra while the four character word was free. Telegrams were used to announce the first flight in 1903 and the start of World War I. During World War II, the sight of a Western Union courier was feared because the War Department, the precursor to the Department of Defense, used the company to notify families of the death of their loved ones serving in the military, Chayet said. With long distance rates dropping and different technologies for communicating evolving -- including the Internet - Western Union phased out couriers in the late 1960s and early 1970s. By last year, only 20,000 telegrams were sent at about $10 a message, mostly from companies using the service for formal notifications, Chayet said. Last week, the last 10 telegrams included birthday wishes, condolences on the death of a loved one, notification of an emergency, and several people trying to be the last to send a telegram. "Recent generations didn't receive telegrams and didn't know you could send them," Chayet said. Samuel Morse, inventor of the Morse Code, sent the first telegram from Washington to Baltimore on May 26, 1844, to his partner Alfred Vail to usher in the telegram era that displaced the Pony Express. It read "WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT?" "If he only knew," Chayet said of the myriad of choices today, which includes text message on cell phones, the Internet and virtually free long-distance calling rates. "It definitely was an anachronism," Noel said. "It's amazing it survived this long." Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more headlines and news from Associated Press, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: WUTCO sent a final 'telegram' to the remaining 'mailgram' post offices and WUTCO agencies handling message service early last Friday quoting the first message ever sent to Alfred Vail (a relative of Ted Vail, AT&T's first chairman) "WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT?" with a final word "STOP" to bring an end to the century and a half system for sending messages. It was quite a show while it lasted. In another issue of the Digest later today, I am going to reprint some old archival material about WUTCO, and discuss their public business offices, clocks, and some other details. PAT] ------------------------------ From: harold@hallikainen.com Subject: Western Union Stops Sending Telegrams Date: 2 Feb 2006 07:57:44 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com 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." whole story at http://www.livescience.com/technology/060131_western_union.html Harold ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2006 08:59:53 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Era Ends: Western Union Stops Sending Telegrams Era Ends: Western Union Stops Sending Telegrams By Robert Roy Britt LiveScience Managing Editor 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." ... http://www.livescience.com/technology/060131_western_union.html ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V25 #50 *****************************