Western Union Innovations
Western Union completed the first transcontinental telegraph line in 1861. It introduced the first stock ticker in 1866, and a standardized time service in 1870. The next year, 1871, the company introduced its money transfer service.
As the telephone replaced the telegraph, this would become its primary business.
In 1914 Western Union offered the first charge card for consumers; in 1923 it introduced teletypewriters, to join its branches. Singing telegrams followed in 1933, intercity fax in 1935, and commercial intercity microwave communications in 1943.
In 1958 it began offering Telex to customers.
Western Union was also the first American telecommunications corporation to maintain its own fleet of geosynchronous communication satellites starting in 1974.
The fleet of satellites, called Westar, carried communications within the Western Union company for telegram and mailgram message data to Western Union bureaus nationwide, as well as traffic for its Telex and TWX (Telex II) services.