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105-727: The Western Union Company is an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in Denver, Colorado . Founded in 1851 as the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company in Rochester, New York , the company changed its name to the Western Union Telegraph Company in 1856 after merging with several other telegraph companies. It dominated the American telegraphy industry from

210-897: A macroeconomic scale that impacts domestic politics and foreign relations . The extragovernmental power and scale of the finance industry remains an ongoing controversy in many industrialized Western economies, as seen in the American Occupy Wall Street civil protest movement of 2011. Styles of financial institution include credit union , bank , savings and loan association , trust company , building society , brokerage firm , payment processor , many types of broker , and some government-sponsored enterprise . Financial services include accountancy , investment banking , investment management , and personal asset management . Financial products include insurance , credit cards , mortgage loans , and pension funds . The term "financial services" became more prevalent in

315-491: A patent caveat with a similar diagram . The same day, Bell's lawyer filed (hand-delivered to the U.S. Patent Office ) a patent application on the harmonic telegraph, including its use for transmitting vocal sounds. On February 19, the patent office suspended Bell's application for three months to give Gray time to submit a full patent application with claims, after which the patent office would begin interference proceedings to determine whether Bell or Gray were first to invent

420-647: A $ 100 bribe from Bell, had taken a "loan" from Bell's patent attorney, and showed Bell the drawings in Gray's caveat. However, this affidavit was drafted for Wilber's signature by attorneys for a telephone company attempting to steal the Bell Telephone patents. Historian Robert Bruce believed that Wilber, who at the time was near the end of his life, ill, and destitute, was "probably liquored up or bribed, or both." Bell responded with his own affidavit that he had never paid any money to Wilber and Wilber did not show

525-865: A $ 6 billion transaction. After acquiring the company, First Data Corporation made the decision to relaunch telegraphy services under the Western Union brand, but sold this to International Telegram in 2006. On January 26, 2006, First Data announced its intention to spin off Western Union into independent publicly traded financial services company focused on money transfers through a tax-free spin-off to First Data shareholders . The spin off occurred as planned on September 29, 2006. The next day Western Union announced that it would cease offering telegram transmission and delivery. In May 2009, Western Union announced its plan to acquire Canada-based Custom House from Peter Gustavson. The deal closed in September 2009 for

630-485: A business, helps businesses raise money from other firms in the form of bonds (debt) or share capital (equity). The primary operations of commercial banks include: The United States is the largest commercial banking services location. New York City and London are the largest centers of investment banking services. NYC is dominated by U.S. domestic business, while in London international business and commerce make up

735-421: A caveat for filing. Sometime on the weekend of February 12–13, Bell's lawyers learned of Gray's caveat. They then rushed to get Bell's application filed on Monday before Gray's caveat, or to make it appear that Bell's application was filed first. There were several versions of Bell's application: Versions E and F are almost identical except for minor changes and the seven sentence insertion that now appears in

840-401: A complete strategic, operational and balance sheet restructuring of the company over the next six years. Amman executed a strategy of redirecting Western Union from being an asset-based provider of communications services, with a money transfer business as a large but less important part of the business, into being a provider of consumer-based money transfer financial services . Thus, Amman ran

945-428: A letter of March 2, 1877, Bell admitted to Gray that he was aware Gray's caveat "had something to do with the vibration of a wire in water [the variable resistance breakthrough that made the telephone practical] — and therefore conflicted with my patent." At this time, Gray's caveat was still confidential, however Gray had previously told Bell of the details of his liquid telephone design in late June 1876, while attending

1050-403: A liquid transmitter design that Gray and Bell's applications both contained. Some writers believe that the paper trail left by various drafts of Bell's patent application is evidence that his lawyers may have acquired the basic ideas of Gray's liquid transmitter which Bell then used successfully to transmit "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you" on March 10, 1876. Gray wrote to Bell saying: "I

1155-473: A method of telegraphy that could transmit multiple messages over a single wire simultaneously, a so-called "harmonic telegraph" . Bell formed a partnership with two of his students' parents, including prominent Boston lawyer Gardiner Hubbard , to help fund his research in exchange for shares of any future profits. He experimented with many different possible transmitters and receivers from 1872 to 1876, created numerous drawings of liquid transmitters, and obtained

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1260-554: A million miles of telegraph lines and two international undersea cables . AT&T gained control of Western Union in 1909, acquiring a 30% stake in the company. However, in 1913 AT&T , under indictment for violating the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 , was forced to sell its shares in the company which once again became independent. Western Union acquired its only major competitor in the American telegraphy sector Postal Telegraph, Inc. in 1945, effectively giving

1365-778: A mobile money-transfer service with the GSM Association , a global trade association representing more than 700 mobile operators in 218 countries and covering 2.5 billion mobile subscribers. The proliferation of mobile phones in developed and developing economies provides a widely accessible consumer device capable of delivering mobile financial services ranging from text notifications associated with Western Union cash delivery services to phone-based remittance options. Western Union's mobile money transfer service offering will connect its core money-transfer platform to m-bank or m-wallet platforms provided by mobile operators and/or locally regulated financial institutions. The company launched

1470-481: A patent in 1875 for a primitive fax machine using liquid transmitters, which appear in the published drawings in the U.S. Patent Office. Elisha Gray was a prominent inventor in Highland Park, Illinois . His Western Electric company was a major supplier to the telegraph company Western Union . In 1874, Bell was in competition with Elisha Gray to be the first to invent the practical harmonic telegraph. In

1575-505: A purchase price of US$ 371 million. This acquisition led the company to be re-branded as Western Union Business Solutions. In January 2011, Western Union acquired Angelo Costa, a group active in money transfer and services to immigrants. Angelo Costa has a network of 7,500 points of sale throughout Europe. The agreement was signed for US$ 200 million. In July 2011, Western Union acquired Travelex 's Global Business Payments division for £ 606 million. In October 2011, Western Union completed

1680-478: A separate company called Western Union International (WUI), which it sold that year to American Securities . In 1967, American Securities listed WUI as a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange . WUI was acquired by Xerox for $ 207 million in stock in 1979 and subsequently sold for $ 185 million in cash to MCI Communications in 1981. MCI renamed WUI to MCI International, ceasing

1785-530: A significant portion of investment banking activity. FX or Foreign exchange services are provided by many banks and specialists foreign exchange brokers around the world. Foreign exchange services include: London handled 36.7% of global currency transactions in 2009 – an average daily turnover of US$ 1.85 trillion – with more US dollars traded in London than New York, and more Euros traded than in every other city in Europe combined. New York City

1890-723: A similarity between the Gray and Bell drawings, there is also the possibility that Gray may have had knowledge of Bell's experiments. The community of electrical inventors was small at the time and gossip spread quickly. In a letter written to Gardiner Greene Hubbard on August 14, 1875, Bell urged Hubbard to patent the telephone concept and added "it might be unwise to let Gray know anything about it." In 1928, Bell's secretary, Catherine MacKenzie, recalled Bell telling her that "I had always entertained ungenerous thoughts of Mr. Gray and believed him capable of spying upon me. Indeed, this idea subsequently led me to remove my apparatus entirely from Mr. Williams' shop to private rooms at Exeter Place." In

1995-524: A special advisor who oversaw the divestiture of the four non-strategic telecommunications assets for about $ 280 million. Most of the company's business services unit including the Easylink electronic mail and Telex businesses were sold to AT&T for $ 180 million in Dec 1990. Western Union Priority Services including Mailgram, Priority Letter and Custom Letter services were not included in the deal. This marked

2100-492: A standardized time service in 1870 and wire money transfer in 1871. In the 1870s, the company faced increased competition from newly formed rival telegraphy conglomerate Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company and from the nascent telephony industry led by the Bell Telephone Company . Western Union instead attempted to launch a rival telephony system before settling a patent lawsuit with Bell and leaving

2205-425: A steady, logical progression towards development of the telephone. Much of the documentation detailing these experiments includes drawings of liquid transmitters remarkably similar to the design which Bell is alleged to have stolen from Gray in 1876. Bell had an important advantage over other inventors trying to develop a talking machine: he had been trained in phonetics and had a deep understanding of how human speech

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2310-505: A sworn denial from Bell, which was also reprinted in The Electrical World . Bell swore that he never gave any money to Wilbur, and that "Mr. Wilbur did not show me Gray's caveat of the drawing of it or any portion of either." The theory that Alexander Graham Bell stole the idea of the telephone rests on the similarity between drawings of liquid transmitters in his lab notebook of March 1876 to those of Gray's patent caveat of

2415-526: A system called Visible Speech . (See example in Fig. 1 .). Melville (who was a friend of George Bernard Shaw and a model for Prof. Henry Higgins in Pygmalion ) frequently involved his son Aleck in his work and public demonstrations. The historian Edwin S. Grosvenor , while researching his biography of Bell, discovered lost drawings that the inventor had done as a young man to illustrate his own research into how

2520-580: A variety of reasons. Some smaller financial centres, such as Bermuda , Luxembourg , and the Cayman Islands , lack sufficient size for a domestic financial services sector and have developed a role providing services to non-residents as offshore financial centres . The increasing competitiveness of financial services has meant that some countries, such as Japan, which were once self-sufficient, have increasingly imported financial services. The leading financial exporter, in terms of exports less imports,

2625-408: A wire vibrating in water', or words to that effect. 'Vibrating in water' was the whole thing. How would he know that much?" About his caveat, Gray wrote "I showed Bell how to make the telephone. He could not mistake it, because the drawings were explicit, as well as the specifications." Ten years after Bell's patent was issued, patent examiner Zenas Wilber claimed in an affidavit that he had taken

2730-404: Is immersed (more or less deeply), and the effect on electrical resistance that this does have on the passage of current in "other liquid", that proves his understanding of undulating current and variable resistance in this device, at the time of his patent application. This information, not found in Gray's caveat, is unlikely to have come from any other mind than Bell's, and Bell's supporters feel it

2835-458: Is not disputed. Bell testified that he inserted the seven sentences "almost at the last moment before sending it off to Washington to be engrossed." He said the engrossed application (also called the "fair copy") was mailed to him from his lawyers on January 18, 1876 and that he signed it and had it notarized in Boston on January 20. But this statement by Bell is disputed by Evenson, who argues that

2940-436: Is produced by the mouth and how the ear processes sound. While electricians such as Reis , Gray and Edison used make-or-break currents (like a buzzer) in their attempts, Bell understood acoustics and wave theory and applied this knowledge to analogous work in his electrical experiments. Bell's father, Alexander Melville Bell , had studied the production of speech and developed a way to transcribe all elements of human speech in

3045-405: Is superior to Gray's description. Bell describes here the method with which his liquid transmitter of March 10, 1876, was built and operated. Gray's caveat describes a liquid transmitter that entails two electrodes that are nearly, but not quite, touching. Both electrodes are submerged in the liquid, which had to be contained in an insulated vessel such as one of glass, as stated in the caveat. This

3150-919: Is the United Kingdom , which had $ 95 billion of financial exports in 2014. The UK's position is helped by both unique institutions (such as Lloyd's of London for insurance, the Baltic Exchange for shipping etc.) and an environment that attracts foreign firms; many international corporations have global or regional headquarters in the London and are listed on the London Stock Exchange , and many banks and other financial institutions operate there or in Edinburgh . Elisha Gray and Alexander Bell telephone controversy The Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell controversy concerns

3255-500: Is the device that Gray pictured in his caveat drawing. Bell's liquid transmitter of March 10, 1876, was not built to the specifications contained in Gray's caveat, but rather to the specifications in Bell's patent application. The positioning of Bell's electrodes was radically different from those of Gray's caveat. Bell's electrodes were relatively far apart, one just touching the surface of the liquid and being acted upon in that position by

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3360-600: Is the largest center of investment services, followed by London. The United States, followed by Japan and the United Kingdom are the largest insurance markets in the world. A financial export is a financial service provided by a domestic firm (regardless of ownership) to a foreign firm or individual. While financial services such as banking, insurance, and investment management are often seen as domestic services, an increasing proportion of financial services are now being handled abroad, in other financial centres , for

3465-408: Is traditionally among those to receive government support in times of widespread economic crisis. Such bailouts, however, enjoy less public support than those for other industries. A commercial bank is what is commonly referred to as simply a bank. The term " commercial " is used to distinguish it from an investment bank , a type of financial services entity which instead of lending money directly to

3570-607: The Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. In 1879, Bell testified under oath that he discussed "in a general way" Gray's caveat with patent examiner Zenas Fisk Wilber. However, when patent examiners investigated possible interferences between applications, it was not uncommon for them to ask questions of the inventors directed at the places of possible interference, which is what Bell claimed happened. In an affidavit from April 8, 1886, Wilber admitted that he

3675-656: The No Way Out 1998 and Slamboree 2000 . They sponsored UEFA Europa League from 2012 until 2015. During the 2003–04 season, Western Union served as the title sponsor for the Senior Division Football League in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The First Data Western Union Foundation donates money to charitable causes globally. After the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami , the Foundation donated US$ 1,000,000 to

3780-474: The Russian invasion of Ukraine . Money can be sent online or in-person at Western Union agent locations. Cash can be collected in person at any other Western Union agent location worldwide by providing the 10-digit MTCN (Money Transfer Control Number) and identification. In some cases, a secret question and answer can be used instead of identification. In October 2007, Western Union announced plans to introduce

3885-534: The United States partly as a result of the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act of the late 1990s, which enabled different types of companies operating in the U.S. financial services industry at that time to merge. Companies usually have two distinct approaches to this new type of business. One approach would be a bank that simply buys an insurance company or an investment bank , keeps the original brands of

3990-417: The 'Treaty of Six Nations', an attempt by six of the largest telegraph firms to create a system of regional telegraphy monopolies with a shared network of main lines. After the creation of the 'Six Nations' system, Western Union continued to acquire both larger & smaller telegraph companies and by 1864 had transformed from a regional monopoly into a national oligopolist with its only serious competitors being

4095-577: The 1860s to the 1980s, pioneering technology such as telex and developing a range of telegraph-related services, including wire money transfer , in addition to its core business of transmitting and delivering telegram messages. After experiencing financial difficulties, it began to move its business away from communications in the 1980s and increasingly focused on its money-transfer services. It ceased its communications operations completely in 2006, at which time The New York Times described it as "the world's largest money-transfer business" and added that

4200-664: The American Telegraph Company and the United States Telegraph Company. Western Union completed the first transcontinental telegraph in 1861. Notably, the first messages went to then President of the U.S. Abraham Lincoln . The firm additionally formed the Russian–American Telegraph Company in an attempt to link America to Europe, via Alaska , into Siberia , to Moscow – a project abandoned in 1867 following

4305-515: The Bell Telephone Company sued competitors and later when Bell and his lawyers were accused of patent fraud. These theories were based on alleged corruption of the patent examiner Zenas Wilber who was an alcoholic. Wilber was accused of revealing secret information to Alexander Graham Bell and Bell's patent attorneys Anthony Pollok and Marcellus Bailey from patent applications and caveats of Bell's competitor Elisha Gray . One of

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4410-422: The Gray caveat. Though both devices are correctly called a liquid transmitter, they are in fact quite different. Bell did not achieve a working liquid transmitter by developing the information contained in Gray's caveat. From the beginning of the experimentation which led to his working liquid transmitter, Bell was following his own vision, not that of Gray. This is seen in Bell's laboratory notebook entries, where

4515-538: The U.S. Abraham Lincoln . The New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company was founded in Rochester, New York by Samuel L. Selden , Hiram Sibley , and others in 1851. In 1856 the company merged with its competitor the Erie and Michigan Telegraph Company , controlled by John James Speed , Francis Ormand Jonathan Smith and Ezra Cornell and, at Cornell's insistence, changed its name to Western Union Telegraph Company. In 1857, Western Union participated in

4620-644: The U.S. Attorney General Augustus Garland 500,000 shares of Pan-Electric Telephone. Subsequently, Garland brought suit against Bell to annul the Bell patents. The Speaker of the House of Representatives appointed a special committee to investigate the Pan-Electric matter and Garland's actions. The April 8 affidavit was published in the Washington Post on May 22, 1886. Three days later, the Post published

4725-553: The U.S. Patent Office granted Bell a patent for a primitive fax machine using a similar transmitter with liquid mercury. Bell's drawing for Patent # 161739 ( Fig. 6a ) for the fax machine, which he called the "autograph telegraph", showed multiple liquid transmitters. A detail of this patent drawing ( Fig. 6b ) shows two liquid transmitters each marked "Z". Bell is alleged to have illicitly seen Gray's patent application of February 14, 1876, and then gone back to Boston and replicated it. However, his notebook drawings of March 1876, such as

4830-673: The Westar satellites launched) in 1988 after Western Union suffered financial losses with their telecommunications assets starting in the early 1980s. In 1981, Western Union purchased a 50% interest in Airfone . It sold Airfone to GTE in 1986 for $ 39 million in cash. From 1982, as a result of financial services deregulation , Western Union began offering wire money transfer services globally. In 1984, after years of declining profits and mounting debts, Western Union began to negotiate with its creditors regarding debt restructuring. The restructuring

4935-624: The Western Union Connect service in October 2015, following partnership agreements with major instant messaging apps WeChat and Viber . The partnership allows users of WeChat to send up to $ 100 to China , the US and 200 other countries, while Viber users can send up to $ 100 for $ 3.99 plus exchange rate fees , with that fixed fee increasing the more money is sent up a limit of $ 499. Along with satellite telecommunications, Western Union

5040-412: The Western Union company for telegram and mailgram message data to Western Union bureaus nationwide. It also handled traffic for its telex and TWX services. The Westar satellites ' transponders were also leased by other companies for relaying video , voice , data , and facsimile (fax) transmissions. The Westar fleet of satellites and ground stations were sold to Hughes (who originally built all of

5145-475: The accusers was attorney Lysander Hill who charged that Bell's attorneys, Pollok and Bailey, had received this secret information from Wilber and that Wilber allowed Bell's attorney to insert a paragraph of seven sentences, based on this secret information, into Bell's patent application after both Gray's caveat and Bell's patent application had been filed in the patent office. However, Bell's original patent application shows no sign of alteration. Wilber noticed that

5250-546: The acquired firm, and adds the acquisition to its holding company simply to diversify its earnings . Outside the U.S. (e.g. Japan ), non-financial services companies are permitted within the holding company. In this scenario, each company still looks independent and has its own customers, etc. In the other style, a bank would simply create its own insurance division or brokerage division and attempt to sell those products to its own existing customers, with incentives for combining all things with one company. The financial sector

5355-537: The acquisition of Finint S.r.l., one of Western Union's leading money transfer network agents in Europe, with more than 10,000 subagent locations across Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom. In May 2015, rumors emerged over a proposed merger of Western Union and competitor MoneyGram , at a time when both companies’ revenue were declining. Western Union denied this was the case. In January 2017, Ant Financial , Alibaba ’s financial technology firm instead unsuccessfully attempted to acquire MoneyGram for $ 880 million, but this

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5460-415: The caveat and not to file a patent application for the telephone. Whether Bell's application was filed before or after Gray's caveat no longer mattered, because Gray abandoned his caveat and did not contest Bell's priority, which resulted in Bell being granted U.S. patent 174,465 for the telephone on March 7, 1876. Several conspiracy theories were presented during trials and appeals (1878–1888) in which

5565-465: The company as two separate companies. One business consisted of the money transfer business, which was funded and operated to take advantage of the significant growth opportunity. The second unit consisted of all the non-strategic communications assets such as the long-distance analog voice network, satellite business and undersea cable assets. In the three-year period through 1990 Amman was supported by Robert A. Schriesheim , also installed by LeBow, as

5670-591: The company monopoly power over the industry. After 1945 the telegraphy industry began to experience a decline as the use of telephones increased, especially in the case of long-distance calls, with total telegraph messages almost halving from 1945 to 1960. In 1958, Western Union began offering telex services to customers in New York City. Teleprinter equipment for the telex network was originally provided by Siemens & Halske AG and later by Teletype Corporation . Direct international telex services commenced in

5775-551: The company would remain as such due to the large number of immigrants wiring money home . From the perspective of the history of technology , Western Union notably completed the first transcontinental telegraph in 1861, being a part of U.S. industry's investments into developing American communications between the coasts of the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean . The first messages went to then President of

5880-436: The conflict and Bell complied. Examiner Wilber then approved Bell's patent which was issued on March 3, 1876. One week later, Bell built and successfully tested Gray's liquid transmitter which transmitted "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you" on March 10, 1876. Some writers continue to accuse Bell of stealing the telephone from Gray, Evenson claims that Bell tested Gray's water transmitter design only after Bell's patent

5985-459: The credit of inventing it...”. Baldwin also failed to represent Gray's interests in the Dowd case. Baldwin was on the payroll of the Bell Telephone Company at the same time he was representing Gray in a patent office action involving the Bell company. Gray did not tell anybody about his new invention for transmitting voice sounds until Friday, February 11, 1876 when Gray requested that Baldwin prepare

6090-420: The diaphragm responding to a human voice. It is this electrode that operated just as Bell described it in his patent application: "…the more deeply the conducting-wire is immersed in the mercury or other liquid, the less resistance does the liquid offer to the passage of the current." This is the device that is pictured in Bell's notebook entry of March 9 and which some have seen as being similar to that pictured in

6195-435: The drawings or any part of Gray's caveat to Bell. Bell testified that he visited Wilber before the patent was granted and asked Wilber what part of his application conflicted with Gray's caveat. Wilber told Bell that the conflict was with his use of variable resistance to cause undulating current and pointed to those words in Bell's application. Wilber suggested that Bell make several amendments to his application that eliminated

6300-403: The end of Western Union's telecommunications carrier business. The official name of the corporation was changed to New Valley Corporation in 1991, as part of the company's move to seek bankruptcy protection to eliminate the firm's overleveraged balance sheet while continuing to grow the money transfer business. The name change was used to shield the Western Union name from being dragged through

6405-469: The experiments of early 1873 shows a liquid transmitter filled with mercury on the table. In 1873, Bell came to realize that his work on the multiple telegraphs could lead to a more important achievement: the transmission of the human voice by electricity. In October 1873, at his lab at 292 Essex Street in Boston, he began experimenting with vibrating metal strips or "reeds" to transmit speech. A drawing from

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6510-455: The feasibility of the telegraphic transmission of speech," Bell wrote later, "and I used to tell my friends, that some day or other we should talk by telegraph." In the winter of 1872-73, after emigrating to Boston, Bell became a professor of elocution at Boston University. He continued research into phonetics and resumed the electrical experiments he had begun in Bath and London towards improving

6615-478: The fee for Gray's caveat was entered on the cash blotter, but the caveat was not taken to the examiner until the following day. The fact that Bell's filing fee was recorded earlier than Gray's fee led to the story that Bell had arrived at the patent office earlier. Bell was in Boston on February 14 and did not know this had happened until he arrived in Washington on February 26. On February 19, Zenas Fisk Wilber,

6720-458: The inventor a letter at Bell's request describing the experiments and transmission of telegraphic messages over wires using a liquid transmitter filled with mercury. "You used tuning-forks; and a connection or circuit was made and broken by means of the vibrations of the form (according to its pitch) in a cup containing quicksilver," he recalled. Richards' letter including a drawing of the experiments ( Fig. 4a ). A detail of this drawing ( Fig. 4b )

6825-484: The last page, and returned it to Pollok with instructions to hold it until Bell received a message from George Brown. There was probably no page number on the notarized page when it was notarized. Both the draft version F and the notarized version X remained in Pollok's file box. According to Evenson, early on Monday, February 14, after learning of the variable resistance feature from Gray's lawyer, Pollok or Bailey inserted

6930-518: The liquid transmitter of Bell's telephone in March, 1876 three years later. (Compare Fig. 3 and Fig. 7 , for example.) Initially, Bell was trying to develop a telegraph capable of sending multiple messages simultaneously over the same wire. Most of these early experiments involved "liquid transmitters" based on the Helmholtz model. On November 9, 1874, Bell's friend and neighbor, P.D. Richards, wrote

7035-425: The many drawings of tests that he and Thomas Watson conducted in the days preceding March 10, all show electrode placements similar to those of the eventual working transmitter. Supreme Court testimony indicated that the device described and pictured in Gray's caveat would not work. Following his own vision and using the electrode placement described in his patent application, Bell had a working liquid transmitter on

7140-429: The margin of version F, page 6. The question is when was this insertion made. Evenson argues that the seven sentences were not in version E or F when Bell sent version F to Pollok in early January 1876. Pollok rewrote the claims on page 10 of version F and his clerk copied version F into an engrossed "fair copy" (version X) which Pollok sent to Bell. On January 20, Bell signed the last page of version X, had it notarized on

7245-602: The mouth formed components of vowel sounds ( Fig. 2 ). Bell detected the pitches of vowels by placing tuning forks in his mouth and speaking. His research into sound production was considered significant enough that Bell was elected into membership in the prestigious London Philological Society at age 19. Bell later recalled that "I commenced the study of Telegraphy with a friend in the city of Bath" in 1867. He began sending electric currents through tuning forks to transmit sounds through by wire, which he later learned had been anticipated by Helmholtz . "I came to believe firmly in

7350-428: The one on March 8 ( Fig. 7 ), are remarkably similar in both design and concept to his drawing over the previous three years. Similarly, his drawing of the liquid transmitter that transmitted the first human speech on March 10, 1876 ( Fig. 8 ) is remarkably similar to his previous drawings. The courts decided priority in favor of Bell and the telephone company he founded. In addition to being constructed differently from

7455-548: The patent examiner for both Bell's application and Gray's caveat, noticed that Bell's application claimed the same variable resistance feature described in Gray's caveat, and both described an invention for "transmitting vocal sounds". Wilber suspended Bell's application for 3 months to allow Gray to file a full patent application with a request for examination. Gray's lawyer William D. Baldwin had been told that Bell's application had been notarized on January 20, 1876. Baldwin advised Gray and Gray's sponsor Samuel S. White to abandon

7560-422: The patent office before noon on February 14. The page number 15 on the notarized page is more than twice as large as page numbers on pages 10 through 14. The inserted seven sentences are at the top of page 9 and the page number 9 is twice as large as page numbers on pages 10 through 14. Evenson does not speculate about what Pollok did with the pages of version X that were replaced by version G. Version F still lacked

7665-654: The previous month. However, there is extensive evidence that Bell had been using liquid transmitters in various experiments for over three years before that time. In 1875, Bell filed a patent application for a primitive fax machine which included drawings of multiple liquid transmitters and the Patent Office granted his application as Patent No. 161739 in April, 1875—ten months before Gray filed his telephone caveat. Experiments by Bell going back to his youth in Scotland show

7770-501: The proceedings (and the resulting bad PR). Under the day to day leadership of Amman and the backing of LeBow , the company's value increased dramatically through its years operating under chapter 11. Following various restructurings, including negotiations with Carl Icahn who became a large bond holder, New Valley Corporation was sold in a bankruptcy auction to First Financial Management Corporation in 1994 for $ 1.2 billion. In 1995, First Financial merged with First Data Corporation in

7875-551: The question of whether Gray and Bell invented the telephone independently. This issue is narrower than the question of who deserves credit for inventing the telephone , for which there are several claimants. At issue are roles of each inventor's lawyers, the filing of patent documents, and allegations of theft. Alexander Graham Bell was a professor of elocution at Boston University and tutor of deaf children. He had begun electrical experiments in Scotland in 1867 and, after emigrating to Boston from Canada , pursued research into

7980-745: The relief effort. The Denver Nuggets of the National Basketball Association announced a three-year deal making Western Union the team's jersey sponsor, beginning with the 2017–18 NBA Season. Liverpool F.C. announced on August 9 2017, that Western Union would become their first ever sleeve sponsors, from the start of the 2017–18 season. They signed a £25m deal for 5 years as Liverpool's sleeve sponsor. Financial services The finance industry in its most common sense concerns commercial banks that provide market liquidity , risk instruments , and brokerage for large public companies and multinational corporations at

8085-496: The same day. Under the U.S. patent laws of 1876 (and until 2011 ), a patent was granted to the first to invent and not to the first to file , and therefore it should not have made any difference whether Bell or Gray filed first. The popular belief was that Bell arrived at the patent office an hour or two before his rival Elisha Gray, and that Gray lost his rights to the telephone as a result. That did not happen, according to Evenson. According to Gray's account, his patent caveat

8190-593: The seven sentence insertion. When Bell arrived in Washington on February 26, 1876, Pollok apparently requested that Bell write the seven sentences and other changes onto version F in Bell's handwriting, thereby creating a draft containing the variable resistance feature that Bell could later testify was made before January 18, 1876 "almost at the last moment" before sending version F to his lawyers. The "smoking gun" that proved that Bell had illegally acquired knowledge of Gray's invention from examiner Wilber prior to filing of Bell's patent application concerns similar sketches of

8295-474: The seven sentences and Claim 4 were inserted into Bell's patent application without Bell's knowledge on February 13 or 14, just before Bell's application was hand carried to the Patent Office by one of Bell's lawyers. Evenson argues that it was not Wilber who leaked Gray's ideas to Bell's attorney Anthony Pollok after Gray's caveat was filed with the patent office, but somebody in the office of Gray's attorney William D. Baldwin, perhaps Baldwin himself, who leaked

8400-405: The seven sentences contained subject matter very similar to the ideas expressed in Gray's caveat and suspended both Bell's application and Gray's caveat, which he would not have done if the seven sentences had not been in Bell's original patent application as filed on February 14, 1876. The conspiracy theories were rejected by the courts. One of the valuable claims in Bell's 1876 US patent 174,465

8505-413: The seven sentences into version X, revised the claims, made other minor revisions, and had the clerk prepare a new engrossed fair copy, version G which consists of 14 pages, not including a signature page. Pollok or Bailey removed the unnumbered notarized signature page from version X and attached it to version G, wrote page number "15" at the bottom of the notarized page, and hand carried the application to

8610-427: The successful laying of a transatlantic cable in 1866. In 1866, Western Union acquired the American Telegraph Company and the United States Telegraph Company, its two main competitors, for a time gaining a virtual monopoly over the American telegraphy industry. The company also began to develop new telegraphy-related services beyond the transmission and delivery of telegrams, launching the first stock ticker in 1866,

8715-434: The summer of 1874, Gray developed a harmonic telegraph device using vibrating reeds that could transmit musical tones, but not intelligible speech. In December 1874, he demonstrated it to the public at Highland Park First Presbyterian Church. After largely abandoning these early experiments, fourteen months later on February 11, 1876, Gray included a diagram for a telephone in his notebook . On February 14, Gray's lawyer filed

8820-475: The summer of 1960, with limited service to London and Paris. In honor of Valentine's Day 1959, Western Union introduced the Candygram, a box of chocolates accompanying a telegram that was featured in a commercial with the famously rotund radio announcer Don Wilson . In 1963, Western Union organized its international cable system properties and its right-of-way for connecting international telegraph lines into

8925-406: The telegraph. Bell replicated and enlarged upon Helmholtz's tuning fork sounder experiments (see Fig. 3 ). These experiments involved running an electric current through a tuning fork attached to a wire that dipped in liquid as the fork vibrated. The tone of the fork was then replicated in another fork hooked up into the circuit. These experiments, with a vibrating wire touching a liquid, anticipated

9030-575: The telephone business completely in 1879. Financier Jay Gould orchestrated a merger of the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company with Western Union in 1881, giving him a controlling share of the merged company. When the Dow Jones Railroad Average stock market index for the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) was created in 1884, Western Union was one of the original eleven companies to be included. By 1900, Western Union operated

9135-454: The telephone. At that time, the USPTO did not require a submission of a working patent model for the patent application to be accepted, but the acceptance process often took years, and with interference proceedings that often involved public hearings. The U.S. Congress had abolished the requirement for patent models in 1870. On February 24, 1876, Bell traveled to Washington D.C. Nothing

9240-486: The third day of his and Watson's efforts. Bell supporters feel this proves that Bell not only had a good understanding of undulating current and variable resistance, but in fact, his knowledge was superior to that of Gray. Gardiner Hubbard , Bell's lead partner in what would become the Bell Telephone Company , had his lawyer file Bell's patent application for the telephone in the U.S. patent office in Washington, D.C., on February 14, 1876. Gray's lawyer filed Gray's caveat

9345-422: The time ( Fig. 5 ) shows the reed (R), which is set in motion by speaking into the mouthpiece or orifice (O). A platinum wire (P) attached to the reed (R) dips into a cup of liquid—in this case, mercury (M). The round mouthpiece that Bell spoke into was made of gutta-percha (gg). As the transmitting reed vibrated and dipped up and down in the liquid, it changed the strength and quality of the current. In April 1875,

9450-499: The transmitter described and pictured in Gray's caveat, Bell's working liquid transmitter of March 10, 1876 operated in a way that is in fact described in Bell's original patent application, but not in Gray's caveat. Gray supporters cite the fact that Bell's first successful experiment in transmitting clear speech over a wire was on March 10, 1876 using the same water transmitter design described in Gray's caveat but not described in Bell's patent. A book by Evenson, concludes that it

9555-505: The use of Western Union branding. Western Union purchased the TWX system from AT&T in January 1969, the only major competitor to its own telex network. Western Union became the first American telecommunications corporation to maintain its own fleet of geosynchronous communications satellites , starting in 1974. The fleet of satellites, called Westar , carried communications within

9660-485: The variable resistance idea and the water transmitter idea to Bell's attorney before Gray's caveat and Bell's application were filed. It was Baldwin who advised Gray to abandon his caveat and not turn it into a patent application, because, Baldwin said, Bell had invented the telephone before Gray and Bell's application was notarized before Gray began his caveat. Baldwin urged Gray to write a letter to Bell congratulating him on his new telephone invention and "I do not claim even

9765-415: Was Bell's lawyers, not Bell, who misappropriated Gray's water transmitter (variable resistance) invention. The following quote forms part of the information that is found in the left margin of Bell's patent application, and is alleged by some to have been stolen from Gray's caveat: Though the advisability of using mercury in his device has been questioned, it is Bell's description of how the conducting-wire

9870-502: Was Claim 4, a method of producing variable electric current in a circuit by varying the resistance in the circuit. That feature was not shown in any of Bell's patent drawings , but was shown in Elisha Gray's drawings in his caveat filed the same day. A description of the variable resistance feature, consisting of the seven sentences, was inserted into a draft of Bell's application. That the seven sentences were inserted in Bell's draft

9975-447: Was also active in other forms of telecommunication services: Most of these services were discontinued by Western Union in the late 1980s due to a lack of profitability, with the company's divisions providing said services being divested and sold to other companies, such as the 1988 sale of WU's satellite fleet and services to Hughes Space and Communications , and the sale of WU's Airfone service to GTE in 1986. In 1914, Western Union

10080-566: Was also sworn to and signed before Thomas W. Swan. These conflicting affidavits discredited Wilber. Furthermore, the April 8 affidavit signed by Wilbur had been drawn up for him by lawyers for the Pan-Electric Telephone Company which at the time was being sued by Bell Telephone for patent infringement. In addition, the Pan-Electric Company was being investigated by the U.S. Congress for having given

10185-411: Was an alcoholic who owed money to his longtime friend and Civil War Army companion Marcellus Bailey , Bell's lawyer. Wilber says that after he issued the suspension on Bell's patent application, Bailey came to visit. In violation of Patent Office rules, he told Bailey about Gray's caveat and told his superiors that Bell's patent application had arrived first. During Bell's visit to Washington, "Prof. Bell

10290-559: Was blocked by the U.S. government citing national security concerns. In 2018, the company moved its headquarters from Englewood, Colorado to the Denver Tech Center . The Englewood office complex was sold in 2020 for $ 40 million. In November 2020, Western Union acquired a 15% stake in the digital payments unit of Saudi Telecom Company for $ 200 million. In 2022, Western Union suspended operations in Russia and Belarus due to

10395-432: Was completed in 1987 when investor Bennett S. LeBow acquired control of Western Union through an outside of chapter 11 process that was a complex leveraged recapitalization. The transaction was backed by a total of $ 900 million in high-yield bonds and preferred stock underwritten by Michael Milken 's group at Drexel Burnham Lambert as part of an exchange offer. LeBow installed Robert J. Amman as president and CEO who led

10500-458: Was entered in his lab notebook until his return to Boston on March 7. Bell's patent was issued on March 7. On March 8, Bell recorded an experiment in his lab notebook, with a diagram similar to that of Gray's patent caveat (see right). Bell finally got his telephone model to work on March 10, when Bell and his assistant Thomas A. Watson both recorded the famous "Watson — come here — I want to see you" story in their notebooks. If there appears to be

10605-516: Was later discontinued by CyberSource effective December 31, 2007. Western Union was a major shirt-sponsor of the Sydney Roosters NRL team from 2002 to 2003. The company still sponsors the team, but not as a shirt-sponsor. Globally Western Union sponsors numerous community events that help support the diaspora communities that use the global Money Transfer service. They also sponsored numerous WWE and WCW pay-per-view events such as

10710-439: Was taken to the US patent office a few hours before Bell's application, shortly after the patent office opened, and remained near the bottom of the in-basket until that afternoon. Bell's application was filed shortly before noon on February 14 by Bell's lawyer who requested that the filing fee be entered immediately onto the cash receipts blotter and that Bell's application be taken to the examiner immediately. Late that afternoon,

10815-488: Was the first to issue a charge card. As the Internet became an arena for commerce at the turn of the millennium, Western Union started its online services. BidPay was renamed "Western Union Auction Payments" in 2004 before being renamed back to BidPay. BidPay ceased operations on December 31, 2005, and was purchased for US$ 1.8 million in March 2006 by CyberSource Corp. who announced their intention to re-launch BidPay. BidPay

10920-515: Was unfortunate in being an hour or two behind you." Gray changed his opinion after learning facts from the trials. Gray wrote that his caveat was filed first: "Whatever evidence there is, is in favor of the caveat having been filed first." In commenting on letters Gray and Bell wrote to each other before the trials, Gray wrote "Two or three letters passed and in one of them I told him of the caveat. In his [Bell's] answer he said, 'I do not know about your caveat, except that it had something to do with

11025-490: Was with me an hour when I showed him the drawing [of Gray's caveat] and explained Gray's methods to him." He says Bell returned at 2pm to give him a hundred-dollar bill. Wilber's other affidavits leave out these details. Only his October 21, 1885 affidavit directly contradicts this story and Wilber claims it was "given at the request of the Bell company by Mr. Swan, of its counsel" and he was "duped to sign it" while drunk and depressed. However, Wilber's April 8, 1886, affidavit

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