The birth of Western Union

Samuel F. B Morse, a painter and professor at New York University began experimenting with a magnetic telegraph of his own design in 1832.

On January 6, 1838 in Morristown, New Jersey, Morse used a crude device to send electrical impulses along a two mile circuit activating a pencil that recorded a series of dots and dashes on a paper tape at the other end.

In April 1851, a Rochester entrepreneur named Hiram Sibley inspired a group of local businessmen to form a House telegraph company, the New York & Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company.

In mid 1854, the company merged with Ezra Cornell’s Erie and Michigan Telegraph Company, New York. Using the telegraph developed by Morse, the company provided massages sent along an electrical wire that were decoded and delivered to customers when they reached their destination.

Ezra Cornell urged the adoption of the name ‘Western Union’, which he had used in his former combination with Speed and Wade.

On April 4, 1856 the state legislature of New York approved the new name and the Western Union Telegraph Company was born.

In 1860, Western Union was awarded a contract by Congress, under the Pacific Telegraph Act, to build line across America from east to west.

The line was completed in 1861, making this company the first to establish telegraph communication across the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific, despite the Civil War.

Western Union grew rapidly by buying its rivals or driving them from the industry with its predatory pricing. 

It moved east by merging with the American Telegraph Company and the United States Telegraph Company in 1866, went west by absorbing the Overland Telegraph Company the same year.

In 1871 Western Union owned more than two third of the 180,000 miles of telegraph wire in the United States and transmitted 90 percent of the messages.

In 1874 the Southern Telegraph Company from Cincinnati to Memphis and New Orleans via Louisville and the Mississippi Valley National Telegraph Company for St. Louis to New Orleans were both absorbed by the Western Union after short independent existence.

In the 20th century, the company pioneered transmission of pictures via the transatlantic cable and widespread use of the radiograph, which help marine navigation considerably.

In 1987 the company was restructured and in 1990 it divested itself of its satellites.
The birth of Western Union