Before computers talked to each other on a public internet there were Wide Area Networks. Before that business communication was teletype. Before that telegrams. Western Union had a device that linked hunderds of business offices to them, the secretary could turn a ****, and a digital code was tapped out by a toothed wheel interrupting contacts, identifying the customer who was summoning a courier to pickup a telegram to be dispatched. I found this one in the basement of bank long ago demolished in downtown Atlanta. I worked with an older guy, James R. Lee, who actually road a bicycle for Western Union as a teenager, and picked up the telegrams. Kinda like calling for a FedEx pickup.

I have seen them in old movies, one is on a door frame in one of the office scenes in Miracle on 34th Street.

Now, thanks to computer weasels, we can have the RAVE on our phones, monitor and reset OBDII, and use the mobile version of this forum.

 

I often wonder where they get the ticker tape these days when the news talks about someone getting a Ticker Tape Parade.
I guess it sounds better than a Shredder Parade. lol

 

I remember going in places like Rich's in Downtown Atlanta back in the 50's. They had the glass tubes that the clerk put a message in a carrier and placed it in the tube to be rushed up to another floor, someone up there responded and put it back in another tube for it to be sent back down.

 

Those went to the central "tube room", part of the cash office, clerks would send up $200 and get small bills back, I had a friend that worked security in that room as off duty police officer. All done with vacuum.

 

That job sucked.