Western Union

The Western Union Company is an American multinational financial services company headquartered in Denver, Colorado. Founded in 1851 as the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company in Rochester, New York, the company changed its name to the Western Union Telegraph Company in 1856 after merging with several other telegraph companies. It dominated the American telegraphy industry from the 1860s to the 1980s, pioneering technology such as telex and developing a range of telegraph-related services, including wire money transfer, in addition to its core business of transmitting and delivering telegram messages. After experiencing financial difficulties, it began to move its business away from communications in the 1980s and increasingly focused on its money-transfer services. It ceased its communications operations completely in 2006, at which time The New York Times described it as "the world's largest money-transfer business" and added that, due to the large number of immigrants wiring money home, it would keep this top position. The New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company was founded in Rochester, New York by Samuel L. Selden, Hiram Sibley, and others in 1851. In 1856 the company merged with its competitor the Erie and Michigan Telegraph Company, controlled by John James Speed, Francis Ormand Jonathan Smith and Ezra Cornell and, at Cornell's insistence, changed its name to Western Union Telegraph Company. In 1857, Western Union participated in the 'Treaty of Six Nations', an attempt by six of the largest telegraph firms to create a system of regional telegraphy monopolies with a shared network of main lines. After the creation of the 'Six Nations' system, Western Union continued to acquire both larger & smaller telegraph companies and by 1864 had transformed from a regional monopoly into a national oligopolist with its only serious competitors being the American Telegraph Company and the United States Telegraph Company.

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Related concepts (16)

Bell System

The Bell System was a system of telecommunication companies, led by the Bell Telephone Company and later by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), that dominated the telephone services industry in North America for over 100 years from its creation in 1877 until its antitrust breakup in 1983. The system of companies was often colloquially called Ma Bell (as in "Mother Bell"), as it held a vertical monopoly over telecommunication products and services in most areas of the United States and Canada.

Telex

Telex is a telecommunication service that provides text-based message exchange over the circuits of the public switched telephone network or by private lines. The technology operates on switched station-to-station basis with teleprinter devices at the receiving and sending locations. Telex was a major method of sending written messages electronically between businesses in the post–World War II period. Its usage went into decline as the fax machine grew in popularity in the 1980s.

Punched tape

Punched tape or perforated paper tape is a form of data storage device that consists of a long strip of paper through which small holes are punched. It was developed from and was subsequently used alongside punched cards, the difference being that the tape is continuous. Punched cards, and chains of punched cards, were used for control of looms in the 18th century. Use for telegraphy systems started in 1842.