Originally appeared in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press

REPRINT RIGHTS FOR SALE
(Click here for permission.)

I got an e-mail from Corbin Kidder, a friend I have corresponded online with for over a decade. Online, he goes by the name "Sig Mazero," a pun on the engineering phrase sigma zero, meaning no defects.

A lover of old things -- I think he has only gotten rid of his Apple IIc in the last year or so -- Corbin is station master at the rail museum at Minnehaha Falls in Minneapolis.

"I was just reading an article that said many corporations and self-employed people handle e-mail with a priority just below Publisher's Clearing House, and above cat food coupons," Corbin writes.

"What makes this an anomaly is that the printed telegram, which was the e-mail of an earlier day, always commanded attention. Part of this was because of their (relative) expense; partly this was because they were the preferred rapid method for sending bad news of death, disaster, judicial actions, bankruptcies.

"Our historic railroad station has a working telegraph key, and we encourage young people to send data the way we did before there were phones, radios, walkie-talkies, CB, Internet, or e-mail.

"The first question is always 'Where does it print out?' Softly and gently we tell them that these messages were originally copied by hand, in a tall, spidery, instantly recognizable script -- which came to be known as "op fist," the hallmark of the professional telegraph operator.

"But the question remains: why is e-mail, the fastest, easiest means of communication devised in my lifetime, treated as a suspect, vaguely arcane method for transferring ideas, and given deferred handling priority? I don't know. Maybe you can think about this."

I did, Corbin, and you know the answer as well as I do -- it's so easy, and so cheap, and it rides such a tidal flood of crapola, that other lovers of old things still find it appalling. Serious messages, for these people, still require the ritual pain of buying a postage stamp and waiting three days.

Second, I was working late last week -- really late, about four in the morning, when the phone rang. It was my sister-in-law Susan, who lives in Paris. Susan and her husband Jean wanted to send funds to her mother in Tucson. Could I be a middleman, and convert Susan's francs to dollars, and forward the money on?

Sure, I said, but how should we do it? I could take a check in foreign denominations to my bank, and my bank could make the exchange for me. Or Susan's bank could wire the money from her account directly to mine.

For various reasons, Susan didn't want to go these routes. She wanted to send the money via Western Union.

Now, Western Union was the Microsoft of its day. Its wires connected a continent and made the U.S. the communications technology leader of the world. In the 1930s, 14,000 messengers delivered telegrams for Western Union in this country.

But that day is pretty much done, and the telegraphy business -- go figure -- is not what it was. Today, Western Union is a much-shrunk, oft-divested company whose niche is global money transfers and priority messaging. It's gotten into, and out of, the satellite business.

Still, I was a bit worried about Susan's plan, because she could not tell me what Western Union office she would be spending the money to. The phone book lists a great many. Some are often located in old urban neighborhoods, where they sell money orders to people without checking accounts. Others operate out of the customer service centers of grocery stores.

My problem was, I was thinking too visually. I pictured Susan taking francs-to-be-dollars to a Western Union office in Paris and sending the money to one of 100 outlets in the Twin Cities, and me having to drive from outlet to outlet, like Odysseus, in search of the francs-now-dollars.

And all this for my mother-in-law.

None of those difficulties occurred, though, because the money existed only in the Western Union computer. All I had to do was go to any of the Western Union outlets -- I went to my regular grocery store in the Midway -- identify myself, and give the transfer number Susan had given me. Presto, the computer printed out a check for me. Which I promptly forwarded to her grateful parents in Arizona.

I know it's old hat, but it worked. And a primitive part of me is still amazed that you can send money through a wire, and the French money you put in is American dollars when you take it out.

That's magic, and it calls for a great slogan. Samuel Morse came up with one when he demonstrated his technology to Congress in 1844. His famous message, "What hath God wrought!" was the "Just do it" of its time. It practically screamed: Warning, upheaval ahead!

But it was not the first message ever telegraphed. That message, transmitted in an experiment in 1838, was: "A patient waiter is no loser."

With a slogan like that, you can see how the upheaval took a while to get underway.

America's Best-Loved Technology Writer(TM), Michael Finley has a free gift for visitors to http://mfinley.com.