The April 1959 issue of WU Telegraph News described the C&O data center that tracks all freight car locations throughout the C&O system.

It utilized 24,000 miles of circuits connecting 238 installations. The circuits cover the 5,000 miles of the C&O system plus 54 C&O branch traffic offices located throughout the US and Canada.

The WU switching center had seven receive-only channels and served 75 offices via 28 circuits. There were 15 one-way circuits to the data center.

Movement data is received on telegraph paper tape and converted to punched card. The cards are sorted by traffic office address and then converted back to telegraph paper tape for automatic transmission back to designated outstation circuit. IBM
provided the punched card processing equipment. (The IBM product line included

converters to/from card to telegraph paper tape).

The center was located in Hungtington, WV, the geographic center of the C&O.

Within two hours of a freight car first moving on the C&O, the information will

be available through traffic offices.

A photograph of the room shows mostly older men in white shirts and narrow ties

working on Teletype and IBM punched card machines. There is a window air conditioner. The room has fluorescent lighting. Curiously, power is supplied by overhead raceways,
with numerous power cords running up to the ceiling, giving the room an old-fashioned look.

At that time, Western Union had high hopes to provide such network service to other businesses*. It realized the historic message telegram was obsolete and sought to offer more business-oriented services.

Other railroads had utilized IBM cards and telegraph for car tracking. By 1959, some were using electronic computers.

In the 1950s, IBM developed modems that could be used on private phone lines for data transmission. IBM didn't push it to avoid pissing off the Bell System, who was a big customer of IBM equipment. Around 1960, Bell introduced its Dataphone, a modem
that could be used in dial up service. Voice grade telephone lines could offer

much faster transmission than WU telegraph lines, but were of course more expensive. (Ref IBM history of telecommunications).


As an aside, the same inssue includes a piece on the WU desk at Idlewild (JFK) Airport in New York. Traffic included about 100 incoming messages for passengers on a normal day (peak 300). WU agents are skilled at finding passengers even with a cryptic
address. (The outgoing count was not given).



* Reference was made to the General Dynamics private network, 15,000 miles providing two-way circuits between 62 locations and a capacity of 170,000 words

an hour (aboug 2,800 words per minute).
Reference was also made to the 36,000 Desk Fax machines in service provided by WU.

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