Western Union Telegraph Company Records

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Western Union Telegraph Company Records

circa 1820-1995

https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/ep8b72e8493-288c-4bd0-84d5-011155da30a7

The collection documents in photographs, scrapbooks, notebooks, correspondence, stock ledgers, annual reports, and financial records, the evolution of the telegraph, the development of the Western Union Telegraph Company, and the beginning of the communications revolution. The collection materials describe both the history of the company and of the telegraph industry in general, particularly its importance to the development of the technology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The collection is useful for researchers interested in the development of technology, economic history, and the impact of technology on American social and cultural life.

452 Cubic feet (871 boxes and 23 map folders)

National Museum of American History (U.S.). Archives Center

Information

SNAC Resource ID: 11663360

National Museum of American History (U.S.). Archives Center

Related Entities

There are 2 Entities related to this resource.

Western Union Telegraph Company

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6jx27mt (corporateBody)

The bark Golden Gate and clipper ship Nightingale were both involved in the Western Union Telegraph Expedition to British Columbia, Alaska and Russia to survey areas where the Western Union Telegraph Company planned to construct a telegraph line linking America and Europe. The line was never completed. Charles S. Bulkley was Engineer-in-Chief and Charles M. Scammon was Chief of Marine. The bark Golden Gate was the flagship of the expedition from June 1865 to March 1866, after which the clipper s...

United Telegraph Workers

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6v45spb (corporateBody)

The United Telegraph Workers, known until 1968 as the Commercial Telegraphers' Union of America, emerged from a series of struggles between smaller unions of private and postal telegraph workers. During the 1930s and 1940s, its chief rivals were the American Communications Association (known until 1937 as the American Radio Telegraphists Association), and a company union, the Association Western Union Employees. Pitted against a single dominant employer, Western Union, and beset by technological...