Telex and TWX History [telecom]

Donald E. Kimberlin

Telex certainly should be called the original form of E-Mail. Far from "dead" on a global basis, UN reports published in the "Brittanica Book of the Year" indicate there are about three million Telex lines around the globe. Contrary to the impression international telephone people like to create, direct, immediate access via Telex still exists to more of the world's political entities than does telephone. This has been the case for many years. (Totalitarian governments must like Telex; they have been known to shut down telephone service, but not Telex. The suspected reason: It can be monitored with hard copy easily, and often [has] been, too. Of course, they themselves use it for military messages.)

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