This Western Union outlet is closed now...sign of the times!
I don't know the history of Western Union...let me check the internet:(Whoa, there is a LOT on Wikipedia):
History
19th century
In 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.
[2]
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.
[3]:196-201 In 1881 Gould took control of Western Union.
[4][5]
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.
[6] 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.
Former headquarters of WU, located at 60 Hudson, New York, NY, USA, in the early and middle 20th century
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.
[7] 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 lines.
During World War II, families of sons in the military service dreaded the Western Union "boy on his bicycle" to arrive at their home with a telegram from the
War Department or the
Navy Department. The message began: The Secretary of War (soldiers and airmen) or Secretary of Navy (sailors and marines), regrets to inform you that, (name, rank and serial number of the man in the military service) was killed in action or missing in action.
Western Union became the first American
telecommunications corporation to maintain its own fleet of
geosynchronous communication satellites, starting in 1974. The fleet of satellites, called
Westar, carried communications within the Western Union company for telegram and
mailgram message data to Western Union bureaus nationwide. It also handled traffic for its
Telex and
TWX (
Telex II) services. The Westar
satellites'
transponders were also leased by other companies for relaying
video,
voice,
data, and facsimile (fax) transmissions.
In 1963 Western Union organized its international cable system properties and its right-of-way for connecting international telegraph lines into a separate company called Western Union International (WUI) which it divested that year to American Securities . In 1983 American Securities sold WUI to
MCI Communications which renamed it to MCI International and moved its headquarters from
New York City to
Rye Brook,
New York.
In the 1970s WUI installed and leased to the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) dedicated 50
Kbps high speed telecommunications facilities between the continental U.S. and Hawaii, Germany and the United Kingdom to provide a test bed for the DOD's
Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). This test bed provided ARPA with a proof of concept for the technology of packet switching which later became the Internet.
In 1981 Western Union purchased a fifty percent interest in
Airfone. It sold Airfone to
GTE for $39 million in cash.
[8]
Due to declining profits and mounting debts, Western Union slowly began to divest itself of telecommunications-based assets starting in the early 1980s. Due to deregulation at the time, Western Union began sending money outside the country, re-inventing itself as "The fastest way to send money worldwide" and expanding its agent locations internationally.
In 1987, Investor
Bennett S. LeBow acquired control of Western Union through an outside of chapter 11 process that was a complex leveraged recapitalization. The transaction was backed by a total of $900 million in high yield bonds and preferred stock underwritten by
Michael Milken's group at
Drexel Burnham Lambert as part of an exchange offer. LeBow installed Robert J. Amman as President and CEO who led a complete strategic, operational and balance sheet restructuring of the company over the subsequent 6 years.
Mr. Amman executed a strategy of redirecting Western Union from being an asset-based provider of communications services, with a money transfer business as a large but less important part of the business, into being a provider of consumer-based money transfer financial services. In so doing, Mr. Amman ran the company as 2 separate companies. One business consisted of the money transfer business, which was funded and operated to take advantage of the significant growth opportunity. The second unit consisted of all the non-strategic communications assets such as the
long distance analog voice network, satellite business and undersea cable assets. In the 3 year period through 1990 Mr. Amman was supported by Robert A. Schriesheim, also installed by Mr. LeBow, as a special advisor who oversaw the divestiture of the 4 non-strategic telecommunications assets for about $280 million.
The official name of the corporation was changed to
New Valley Corporation in 1991, just in time for that entity to seek bankruptcy protection as part of Mr. Amman's strategy to eliminate the overleveraged balance sheet while continuing to grow the money transfer business . The name change was taken to shield the Western Union name from being dragged through the proceedings (and the bad PR that would cause).
[9] Under the day to day leadership of Robert J. Amman and the backing of
LeBow, the company's value increased dramatically through its years operating under chapter 11.
Following various restructurings that included negotiations with Carl Icahn who became a large bond holder, Mr. Amman engineered the sale of New Valley in a bankruptcy auction to
First Financial Management Corporation in 1994 for $1.2 billion where he became vice chairman, and a year later merged with
First Data Corporation in a $6 billion transaction. On January 26, 2006, First Data Corporation announced plans to spin Western Union off as an independent, publicly traded company. Western Union's focus will remain money transfers. The next day, Western Union announced that it would cease offering telegram transmission and delivery,
[10] the product most associated with the company throughout its history. This was, however, not the original Western Union telegram service, but a new service of First Data under the Western Union banner; the original telegram service was sold off after New Valley Corporation's bankruptcy and now operates as
iTelegram.
The spin off was completed in September and Western Union is now an independent, publicly traded company.
Involvement in early computer networking Western Union telegrams were transmitted through a
store and forward message switching system. Early versions were manual telegraph systems. Later systems using
teleprinters were semi-automatic, using punched
paper tape to receive, store, and retransmit messages.
Plan 55-A, Western Union's last paper tape based switching system (1948–1976), was fully automatic, with automatic routing.
Western Union was a prime contractor in the
Automatic Digital Network (AUTODIN) program. AUTODIN, a military application for communication, was first developed in the 1960s and became the precursor to the modern
Internet in the 1990s. The
Defense Message System (DMS) replaced AUTODIN in 2000.
AUTODIN, originally named "ComLogNet", was a highly reliable service that operated at 99.99% availability, using mechanical
punched card readers and tab machines to send and receive data over
leased lines. During the peak operation of AUTODIN, the United States portion of the network handled twenty million messages a month. Western Union failed in its attempts to engineer a replacement (AUTODIN II), leading to the development of an acceptable packet-switched network by
BBN (the developer of the
ARPANET) which became the foundation of today's Internet. AUTODIN service ceased in 2000, years after it had become obsolete.
A related innovation that came from AUTODIN was Western Union's computer based EasyLink service. This system allowed for one of the first marketable
email systems for non-government users. In addition, the system allowed the same message to be sent simultaneously to multiple recipients via email, fax, mailgram, or telex services; as well as receive messages from the integrated formats. With the service, users could also perform research utilizing its InfoLink application. EasyLink Services is now its own company.
End of telegrams
As of February 2006, the Western Union website showed this notice:
"Effective 2006-01-27, 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."[11]
This ended the era of telegrams which began in 1851 with the founding of the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company, and which spanned 155 years of continuous service. Western Union reported that telegrams sent had fallen to a total of 20,000 a year, due to competition from other communication services such as email. Employees had been informed of the decision in mid-January.
Telegram service in the United States continues to be available through
iTelegram and other companies.
