1946 - 1960 Western Union Desk - Fax Antique Telegram/Fax Machine
Item History & Price
| Reference Number: Avaluer:1734293 | Brand: Western Union |
| Original/Reproduction: Original | Age: Unknown |
| Maker: Western Union | Modified Item: No |
| Color: Gray |
Antique Western Union Desk-Fax. Telegram/fax machine. Found this at an estate sale. I am not sure the actual year but I believe it is around the '50s. Comes with power cord. I have not plugged it in. Has a piece if paper tapped to the front that I did not want to try to remove. Comes with telegram papers and envelopes. See pictures. Sold as-is. Buyer pays shipping price. It weighs about 30lbs. Ask me any questions. I will try to answer to the best of my knowledge.I found this article a...bout this machine. The Western UnionDeskFax This device, manufactured for Western Union by Seeburg, was used to send and receive telegrams from a customer location to Western Union's nearest office. It was not used for sending fax transmissions between cutomer locations. It would be connected to a dedicated line and there was no facility for dialing or directing calls to or from another location. I also found this article.. The technology remained an oddity for many years, mainly finding use by the military for sending surveillance and other photos to analysts. Western Union offered a service calledDesk Faxfrom 1948 until the mid-1960s, where a company could rent a device from them that could send images to another similar machine over a telephone line. By 1962, there wereover 38, 000 of these machines in use. Western Union also offered this service to the public, costing $4 (equivalent to about $30 today) to send an 8 by 11-inch page across the USA.
