Western Union 4/8/1962

WU ran an advertisment supplement section to the New York Times on this date. There's far too much text to transcribe, but here are some of the highlights: [Please note this is not an inclusive document of what was said in the ad.]

Obviously the company was very confident of its future to spend the money to produce the special section. Those things weren't cheap.

The company promised a number of things to come. Perhaps those more familiar with their actual network could comment on how far they actually went.

WU was building a $357 million plant modernization/explansion between

1961 and 1964, for leased line services, Telex, microwave, fax, for data and spoken word and video.

MICROWAVE: WU made a big deal about their growing network, calling it (in 1962!) "the new superhighway of the information explosion". It would handle 24,000 telegraph messages simultaneously, b&w and color television, voice, high speed fax, and high speed computer and tape communications.

There were to be 270 microwave base stations, about 30 miles apart via line of sight. That doesn't sound like a large geographic area. Further, they said bases were intentionally located away from cities, connected by spur lines, so that towers would not be affected by nuclear attack. [Who provided the spur line, WU or AT&T?]

By comparison, In 1945, WU was 60-100 words/minute at 150Hz band. In

1948 the microwave covered New York, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Chicago.

The big question is how much of this microwave network was eventually built and placed in operation, and how well it served WU. If WU had is own network, why was it so dependent on AT&T toll lines?

TELEX: Called "Dial the world, talk in writing". A big feature pushed was unattended operation, call another machine and no need be there to take the call. Telex began 5/28/58 in the U.S.. Telex charges by the second, not a three-minute minimum of AT&T. Worldwide the printers are all compatible. In 1964 they projected 20,000 subscribers. [Note that overseas telephone rates were extremely expense in 1962, so sending a message via Telex was cheaper.]

[When I get time I'll summarize subsequent pages on defense communications, such as nuclear attack detection circuits, satellites, Air Force data communciations, fax and pictures.]

***** Moderator's Note *****

One of the readers has donated a large archive of Western Union material: as time allows, I'm going to add it to the digest's web site.

Bill Horne Temporary Moderator

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Reply to
hancock4
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Oops, forgot this time, sorry about that.

That will be gratefully appreciated.

If I ever get a real setup, I have a few Bell System consumer booklets that should be scanned and centrally archived.

Reply to
hancock4

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