Western Union

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 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 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 were sent to the President of the United States, who was Abraham Lincoln in 1861.