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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