Ear on Chicago; Western Union

The sound you just heard was that of a teleprinter at the Western Union Office. The main office is located at 427 South LaSalle Street in Chicago. And this is Hugh Hill bringing you the story of how Western Union is operated in Chicago. First of all, let's talk to the superintendent of this office, Mr. Charles T. Baumgart. Mr. Baumgart, if you don't mind, sir, we'd like to take a tour of your building and look at the operation of Western Union. Good morning, Mr. Hill. We're delighted to show you around Western Union because I'm sure you'll find an interesting story here. I'd like to introduce to you our press representative, Mr. Dave Rush, who will serve as a guide around our building here in Chicago for you. Dave is an old friend of ours, Mr. Baumgart, and I'm very happy to have him as a guide. We'd like to return to you at the end of the program, and we'll, after we see what we see, I will talk some more. Fine, I'll be glad to see you again, Mr. Hill. Dave, we have now come up to the seventh floor, which is the main traffic operating room. This and the fifth floor combined. Now, up here, they are

receiving and sending out messages. Suppose you tell us something about it. Well, Hugh, I'd prefer that I turn you over to a man better qualified than I am, our assistant traffic manager, Walter Watkins, Mr. Watkins. Mr. Watkins, first of all, let's take a look at this equipment over here. Here is what I call a teletypewriter. Perhaps it's called a different name by you, fellas, up here. And apparently it's receiving a message from somewhere, right? That's correct. That's the Western Union printer receiving telegrams from Cincinnati. Oh, wow. Now, tell me how these telegrams originated. Would they be personal wires or business messages from some individual in the Cincinnati area? That's right. And from Cincinnati or in the Cincinnati area, there are personal messages. And are they coming into Chicago? That's correct. These are for Chicago delivery. Suppose we walk over here and take a look at the wire, and I don't know whether the listeners know this, but it's against the law to read the content of a message or from whom the message is sent. This one, this wire, particular wire, was 11NL. Is that

the... That's a night letter, yes. A night letter, I see. Now, how do these girls know when a message is completed? Because the wire is continuous. It's a small, what is it, about a quarter of an inch wide? That's right. A paper tape. And the tape rolls through constantly. And on every inch of the tape, virtually, there is some printing. How do they know when the end of the wire has arrived? Well, the signature of the message is separated from the text by an equal sign. And there is another equal sign following the signature. When the operator sees that last equal sign, that indicates that the message has been completed. All right. Now, the purpose of the girl sitting at this machine, as the wire or the tape rather comes off the wire, apparently it has some kind of glue on the back of it, is that right? It has. The operator runs it through a hand moistener, which moistens the musselage on the reverse of the tape, so that it can be gummed on

the regular Western Union telegram blank. Now, once that message is taken off of that paper tape, and torn into short strips and pasted onto the Western Union telegram paper, it is in place in a conveyor belt, which is right above her arm. She can reach up there and drop the message right onto that conveyor belt. That's right. The conveyor belt then moves over here to a much longer conveyor belt. Over here towards the western side of the building, in front of a row of windows. We've talked about incoming messages coming in from Cincinnati, and the one that you showed me coming in from Minneapolis. But down here, I'd like to walk over and take a look at the machines, which I understand are sending out messages. That's right. That's where we're transmitting the messages from Chicago to Cincinnati. All right, let's go take a look over at that, and I'll let you hear the difference in the machines. For example, this is a machine with an incoming wire from Cincinnati.

Now, let's listen to a machine, which is sending out some sort of a message to Cincinnati. Now, there is a difference in sound, and you wouldn't know what it was, unless you were here to see it, really. Both machines have a keyboard, and except on one, the girl is punching out a message. On the other one, she's taking a message in. On this punching machine here, she is punching a group of holes in a paper tape, which is about twice as wide as the tape that you get on your telegrams. Now, what do the holes mean? Well, the holes perforated by the keys on the perforator, and the various combinations transmit the letters and figures in the telegram. There are five holes in this perforated tape that's possible to have from one to five combinations. For example, a single hole at

the top of the tape represents a letter E, and the first and second holes in the tape will make the letter A. Now, once again, after she finishes typing out her message on this tape, the tape is then piped into another machine. Is that right? That's right. Where is that machine? The other machine is in Cincinnati, where it's received on a printer in Cincinnati. Now, again, we go back to the incoming messages. We'll leave the outgoing messages for a moment, but take the incoming messages from that conveyor belt over here. Let's go over there and take a look. Well, Mr. Watkins, we have stepped over just a few feet away from where we were a moment ago, to look again at this conveyor belt. Now, the wires that are coming into Chicago and are for delivery to Chicago are on this belt right in front of us. They're moving along from left to right. They move into another series of conveyor belts, and they call that, I think, a sandwich belt. Is that right? That's right. They're sandwich belt carries them overhead to

a drop, where they are dropped to our fifth floor, Rock Center, where our city rock clerks route the telegrams to the branch office in Chicago or to the telephone room for telephone delivery or to the messenger department for those delivered by messenger. It's a wonder to me why the how the wires continue to float down that shoot over there without one or two of them getting caught and clogging up the whole thing. Well, occasionally one does get caught, but we have, as you can see, we have mirrors there, and all we have to do is look up in the mirror and we can see if a message has been caught somewhere, and we have an inspector who spends all his time inspecting the belts on these shoots to be sure that no message has been delayed. What are those two copper -colored chains hanging down? Well, those are just chains hanging there, which reduce the static that is generated by the moving belts. It takes away the static electricity. Yes, and that is to prevent messages from

being caught or stuck to the metal frame there as a result of the static. Well, that's an amazing operation. You see all these telegrams coming into Chicago, and they move along this belt here, and they drop gently as if you took a piece of paper and threw it out into the air, they drop gently down this shoot. Now, we talked about only Cincinnati. Actually, these wires are coming in from all over the United States, is that right? From all our long -distance telegraph circuits from all over the United States. Well, now I guess Mr. Watkins, the best place for us to go, is back to the fifth floor because we've still got to talk about messages that are from Chicago going out to other points. Thank you very much. Let's move on down to the fifth floor. Dave, are you with us? Yes, sir. Dave, we'll get back over here to Mr. Watkins, because he's still with us here on the fifth floor. We want to talk about the incoming and outgoing messages, so we'll talk to him for a minute. Fine, he's the expert. See, back with you in a minute, Dave. Mr. Watkins, first of all, we had the

messages that were coming into Chicago from, well, again, we'll stick with Cincinnati, because that's the specific list that we were looking at, even though, as you said, they were coming from all over the United States. They were dropping down that chute, and here they are arriving. Now, these girls here, what are they doing? They're checking the address on the telegrams, so that they can be routed to the proper branch office, or to the customer who has a Western Union machine in his office, or to the telephone department for telephone delivery. These clerks apply the telephone number, and some of them are dropped down to the messenger delivery department. They apply the proper routing for all incoming telegrams. In other words, the telegram now is being routed along this series of belts. Each belt indicates a certain area of the city, and from there, of course, they're going to be delivered to whoever is supposed to receive them. That's correct. Alright, now we've finished up so

much of the incoming messages coming into Chicago. A little while ago, you and I talked about the messages that were going out of Chicago, that were being sent out on that tape, at perforated tape. Well, right across the aisle from us, we have a whole row of pneumatic tubes. Let's go take a look at those tubes. Now, what exactly is this? Well, this is a carrier that the message is placed in, and then the carrier is placed into the pneumatic tube, and the air pressure forces it from this office to the branch office. We have quite a few branch offices in Chicago. In fact, we have 23 that are handled by pneumatic tubes. What are these tubes run underground all over the city? Underground, all through the loop area. All tubes run underground. The longest tube line is from this office to the Gural

building. It's 5 ,865 feet one way. What I want to find out is how these tubes operate. Where would this one come from, for example? Well, that's AC office. Now, here's a PH office. That's our branch office in the Palmer House. This pneumatic tube runs from this building to the Palmer House. And they're operated by compressed air. One side is pressure, and the other side is a vacuum. Now, what would happen if I walked into the Palmer House and sent out a wire? Well, you'd hand your telegram to the branch office clerk, and she would place it in a carrier similar to this and put it in the pneumatic tube. And the tube runs between the Palmer House and this room. The carrier would come out right where we were standing. The clerk would take the telegram out of the carrier and place it on that conveyor belt where it would go to the routing center and be routed to the proper circuit for transmission.

Let's listen for just a moment. There were some tubes popping through here. Are they about ready to come through? There it is. There they come. You could hear them coming through there. Although those were coming from where, Mr. Watkins. From the board of trade office. I see. Well, I think that pretty much tells a story of what the tubes do here at Western Union. Listen to that. Now, that pop you heard was the pop of air. The release of air pressure as it came through there. All right, we want to get into the telephone operation. Where is that? That's at the north end of this floor. All right, let's go down there. Mr. Watkins, we are now in the telephone operations room. Suppose you tell us what happens in here. This is Mr. George Hack, Assistant Capric Manager in charge of our telephone room. This is where the messages are received over a telephone from the customers and delivered by telephone. Mr. Hack, this is a big operation in here. How many girls do you have

operating before? We have about 75 here during the daytime. And we take in or record about 4 ,000 messages and deliver about 1 ,800 during the day period. In other words, you have girls sitting at these banks of phones and typewriters over here who receive telegrams which are phoned in throughout the city. That's right, that's right. They receive them and they type them and record them and release them that are outgoing circuits upstairs. Here's a young lady over here typing out a message right now. Suppose we listen in. What's this bell ringing over here, by the way? That's a customer calling in from a Tyler. This girl here has finished this message and she is taking it somewhere. What does she do with this message? She releases that message on a belt conveyor and it goes upstairs. Through the seventh onward, it's transmitted onward to its destination. Yes, we went through that story so we

won't continue that. Now how many wires do you handle coming through here during, say, an eight -hour period? An eight -hour period will record about 4 ,000 messages and will deliver about 1 ,800. I see. In this department I understand you also have what is known as the singing telegram which is sung over the phone. Is that right? That's right and we have some very nice young ladies with nice voices to sing them. Do you have some girl now that's about ready to sing a message? I bet we have. We have a young lady here, Miss Trayhee. Can we listen in? You bet. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday dear buddy. Happy birthday to you. The message is signed, Daddy. Happy birthday.

Mr. Henk, could we talk to this young lady for just a moment? I hate to tear her away from the phone here. If you can, you can talk to her right now. You have a very fine voice, young lady. Thank you. Do you have many of these messages to send out each day? Yes, we do. We have quite a few of them. They keep you pretty busy. Quite busy. Thank you very much for talking to us. You're very welcome. We're now back with Dave Rush and we've come down to the third floor. Dave, I've just recorded the sound of a telegraph key here. What's going on? Oh, that's Cedar Rapids talking to someone else in Iowa about some wire trouble between the two of them, which was straightened out. You read that? Oh, yes. You an old key man? That I have here. All right, now what goes on in this room, Dave? This is the real key point of Western Union's Operation West. And in this

huge room, you see this tremendous switchboard with wires joining one point to another. For example, if we want to set up a circuit between South Bend and the San Francisco Chronicle, it would be done through this room here. South Bend would call the Chicago Dispatcher. In other words, say that the reporter, sports writer for the San Francisco Chronicle wants to cover a Notre Dame game. He calls in and orders a circuit. Is that right? That's right. You go down there and you handle the whole thing because you're a press representative. That circuit is set up right here in Chicago. That it is. Now, for example, here, let us assume that there's wire trouble between here and Omaha going west to set up the circuit to San Francisco. Well, then we could bypass Omaha. We could go north to Minneapolis or go south into Texas and go around and get to San Francisco. The distance means nothing. The sound travel just same speed. You have circuits all over the United States and all over the world for that matter. That's right. Not all over the world. We have

our cable system, of course, but all over the United States. Hamlets, little places that is never dream we'd have a circuit. But over railroads, we work with them too, you know. Dave, can you send out a message to someone here? Yes, I can send one out of that. I'll put it on the short circuit. I'll arrange that right now. What do you mean by a short circuit? Well, it just goes into the board to a ground and back to us. And you, I'm going to address this to you. All right. Now, if you listen closer, I'll say Hugh Hill. Well, it's

not taking you this long to say Hugh Hill, is it? I said Hugh Hill, this bug is unfamiliar to me. And I went on to describe a little bit of what I was doing, sending in Morse. Well, that's very interesting, Dave. Very interesting indeed. I did it to Hugh because I imagine so many people who have studied the Morse code. Boy Scouts do it, you know. And those kids get a big kick when they recognize a few letters. Dave, how did all this come about, this telegraph system, this modern means of communications that Western Union has set up? Well, it started many years ago by Roger Bacon working with a load stone, which was the foundation of this business. That was back in the 13th century, I believe. Since then, many men have experimented until Samuel F. B. Morse really went to work on it. Then many small companies formed their own telegraph companies in their areas. Eventually, the Western Union, or a group of men, consolidated all these companies to form the Western Union

and became this huge system that it is today. Dave, there are a lot of services that Western Union performs today, many more besides just sending wires. Of course, we've talked about that because that's the most important part of your business. And this controls the Western Union clocks, which people use throughout the city of Chicago, isn't that right? Yes, we have a master clock, which operates with Washington at the Naval Observatory. And that one corrects all the clocks at a given period every day. And so all our clocks are very accurate. We talked about the singing telegrams, but there's also a wake -up service you have, isn't that right? That's like for fellows like you. Well, we call you and make sure that you get up by repeatedly calling you. And there's a certain that you're up. And it's a very good service for people who have to catch planes or trains or who've had a rough evening, the evening before, and might be a little worried about getting up on time. There's so much going on behind the scenes like our press work, which isn't generally known. The average person thinks

of Western Union only as transmitting and receiving a telegram. Actually, we do many more things. Dave, what's new in the field of the Western Union telegram? Well, the best way I couldn't describe it is that we have what amounts to a wire photo of the telegram. Can we see that? Oh, yes. I'll take you to that operation right now. Let's go down there. Dave, we have come now down to the demonstration room of Western Union where you have the Interfax Equipment on display. What happens here? Well, this is our newest form of communications. And to talk to you about it, I would like to introduce Mrs. Marie Harrison. Mrs. Harrison, suppose first of all, we talk about these two pieces of equipment over here on this desk. What happens over here? These machines are placed out in the various customers' office. We have many thousands of them throughout the United States. All they need to do is prepare on a special blank in pencil pen or typewritten. A place it on the machine, push the outgoing button, requires no further attention by them. And it's received at the Western Union

office in a large blown up size. This is done by means of the electric eye passing over the intelligence that they have prepared. In other words, you're sending a good send a picture or a writing or a typewritten message or anything. It's an exact facsimile of what is placed on their blank. You start this machine up and we'll watch it. All right, we press the right outgoing button, which is a signal to the main office Western Union that a message is waiting in the customer's office. Now this is revolving now. It is revolving, passing over the electric eye. But it has not yet been picked up by the Western Union office. Which is over here for purposes of our demonstration. That's right. This is the receiving machine here. That's right. Now you're going to pull a jack out where you're going to put that. I'm going to take the jack and place it in the waiting light. Like this is comparable to a telephone switch board. A signal light is burning, indicating the customer on the outside has a telegram. I will now place it into the waiting light and press my button, which brings up the recording

machine. This is coming in on what we call Tolodotus paper. It is gray paper. It's being produced in a large blown up size. I can hear it now coming through. It doesn't make much noise, but I can see the part of the picture that you have coming from this machine over here. It's arriving right now at this machine. It's an exact duplication of what the customer is sending from the outside office. This is also used by some customers who lease this on a basis from various departments into their different parts of the city or different parts of the building. We are back now with Mr. Charles T. Baumgart, who is the superintendent of this Western Union office. As we told you at the beginning of the program, we would make a tour Mr. Baumgart and we have. We've enjoyed it very much. I think the listeners certainly will enjoy hearing the story of Western Union. We want to thank Dave Rush for accompanying us on the trip and all of the people in your organization who have helped us. And especially you, sir, for allowing

us to take the tour. Mr. Hill, it's been a great pleasure and we consider it a great honor to have you come and put our industry up. It's one of my favorite shows and I'll be looking forward to hearing your story over Ear on Chicago in the near future. Thank you very much, sir. And that's the story of the main office of Western Union at 427 South Los Alastres in Chicago. This is Hill Hill speaking.