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Show 22 Vernal Express Wednesday, Octobers, 1999 Year 2000 a Millinnium in Communications : ' ; ; jgs .:;. '-ij--Ls Dicky Jensen stands by buggy and Year 2000... continued from page 21 such as the Vernal-Price and later the Vemal-Colton lines. As the roads into the. Basin improved the use of automobiles eventually replaced stagecoaches, and in 1919, U.S. mail trucks were used to haul the mail. Today, most of the U.S. mail is still trucked into the area, mostly from Salt Lake, with a small amount being flown into the Vernal Uintah County Airport One interesting and amusing fact was recounted in the book "Vernal, A Century of Growth" by Alice Hall: "One of the most interesting eras of mail service began in 1914, and lasted until 1916. It began when the weight per package raised to 50 pounds. Almost immediately, the parcel post coming in and going out of the Vernal Post Office doubled. During this period, farmers and businessmen used the parcel post to send all the incoming and outgoing produce. At that time, freight rates were $2.50 per hundred pounds, and parcel post was $1.05. During this period, 10,000 pounds of salt, 12,500 pounds of flour, 8800 pounds of sugar, plus honey, eggs, and other groceries, pitchforks, brooms, water hydrants, produce, auto tires, feather beds, and blacksmith black-smith tools were only a few of the things shipped into or out of the Vernal Post Office at that time. "The biggest single set of incoming incom-ing mail was the 5,000, fifty-pound packages of . bricks which were mailed to W. H. Coltharp and some of his friends. These bricks were used to build the Bank of Vernal, which is now Zions First National Bank. It is known as "The Bank that Came by Mail'. For a short period of time, both the Vernal and Salt Lake Post Offices were swamped with bricks. To reach Vernal, the bricks went by Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, to Watson, Utah, on to Vernal, on the Uintah Toll Road Company. To get here every brick had to travel over 400 miles." This is how the bank became known as the Parcel Post Bank or "the building shipped by mail." Vernal City also received its name in a sense "via the mail." In 1 886, Ashley Center a small settlement just four miles south of Ashley Town, sent a petition to the Post Office Department requesting a post office to be established called the "Ashley Center Post Office." The postal officials felt the names of the two post offices were too much alike and they feared the mail would become mixed up. Approval of the new post office was given but the name "Vernal Post Office" was assigned by the 4th postmaster general. Shopkeeper Thomas Mitchell was designated as the first postmaster, and he hung a sign on his store with the new name. It took awhile for the townspeople to accept the new name, saying this was not Vernal but Ashley Center. Gradually, acceptance came when their mail came addressed to Vernal, Utah. The post office was relocated a number of times through the years. It is currently located at 67 North 800 West. In 1893, Vernal was granted a town organization by the county court and was later incorporated as a third-class city in 1897. Newspaper The first newspaper established in Uintah County was published on January 2, 1891 and has been published pub-lished continuously since that time; Kate Jean Boan, the owner-publisher, named it The Uintah Pappoose. The paper was printed on a printing press ordered from a mail-order piles of parcel post in 1913. house and the first issue had four Through the years the telecommu-Vemal telecommu-Vemal Express Publisher Jack R. Wallis assists Vene Collett in operating oper-ating a hand-fed newspaper press. pages with three columns to a page. After a year Kate Boan sold the paper to James Barker, a bachelor. He quickly changed the name to The Vernal Express after being teased about his "Papoose". The newspaper changed hands several times before being taken over by a stock company in 1910. James H. Wallis of Salt Lake City, who had come to Vernal in 1917, managed the newspaper until 1923, at which time he purchased the paper. The Wallis family has operated oper-ated the paper since that time, with William B. Wallis as the next editor and was followed through the years by his son. Jack, who currently owns and publishes it with his son, Steve. The newspaper office was located at various locations in Vernal until 1935 when a new building was built at the present location on North Vernal Avenue. Throughout the years. The Vernal Express has had several types of presses. They have had three hand-fed hand-fed preses, a roll-fed press and a roll-fed offset press. In the summer of 1982, the Express went to offset "cold type" makeup. They makeup has gone from hand setting to Linotype to phototype to computer offset. Telegraph and Telephone Telecommunications was first made possible to this part of the state through the use of the telegraph tele-graph in 1882 when a line was established into Ashley Valley from Fort Bridger. That line was dismantled disman-tled the next year. In 1886 another telegraph line was set up between Price and Fort Duchesne to Dragon. In 1875. Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas A. Watson invented the telephone, or as it was first called, the "harmonic telegraph." It wasn't until 1894, when a newly organized telephone company in the area established a line located between Vernal and Fort Duchesne. This one-telephone line, located first in the Vernal Post Office was used mainly for emergency calls. Communications with the' outside world was as simple as placing a telephone call from Vemal to the fort where the telegraph sent the message on. It was considered most exciting by those using this system when the first message sent to Salt Lake City took twenty-eight minutes min-utes to send and the answer came back in one hour and 25 minutes. Telephone service was . available in private homes by 1909, and eighteen names were printed in the first telephone directory. The following fol-lowing year that directory grew to include 250 names. nications industry has been improving improv-ing continually with modern day advancements, with many new services available here in the Basin. From the use of switchboards, party lines, crank phones, rotary phones and wireless telephones to satellite technology, the use of cellular phones and state-of-the-art technology, technol-ogy, the Basin is no longer a remote, out-of-the-way place on the map. According to Jay M. Haymond as stated in Utah History Encyclopedia: "phone companies have expanded services and are attempting to define a telecommunication telecommu-nication business to meet and claim a share of the future in information services related to computers, networks, net-works, modems, faxes, satellite and cellular transmissions, and many other (and future) technological communication breakthroughs of the present era." TV and Radio Media technology here in the Basin has grown with the times. In the recently published book "Settlements of Uintah County Digging Deeper," by Doris Karren Burton, she relates: "Radio was a wonder to people, but had they been told after its invention that they would one day be able to look at a box to see the people who were talking, they would have laughed at the impossibility. impossi-bility. In 1956 their skepticism again turned to awe as they watched a broadcast on the first television set in Vernal. This 'miracle' culminated culmi-nated in 1969 when people watching watch-ing their television sets saw a man step onto the moon as though it was occurring in their own front, yards. People now realize this technology is just the beginning, the 'tip of the iceberg' of what will transpire in the twenty-first century." Radio played an important role to bring news of the outside world into the area especially 'during the World Wars. Today there are a number of radio stations in the Basin that help to keep residents entertained and informed about events taking place in our area. The introduction of television in the mid-50s connected Uinta Basin with the world in an even more dramatic dra-matic way. At first, reception was poor due to TV stations being located locat-ed so far away, but in 1958 Uintah County erected a tower on Blue Mountain to bring residents community com-munity television. Jobs have been created by the TV industry with cable companies and satellite reception recep-tion companies competing for business. Adlvairatiages Optic fiber is made of hair-thin strands of glass carrying pulses of light in different wave lengths. The light pulses carry highly compressed com-pressed digital signals, or strings of zeroes and ones, like computer data. These glass fibers have major advantages over copper cable, which traditionally carried telephone tele-phone transmissions on copper. . Clearer transmissions: Immune to electromagnetic interference from lightning and radio signals that cause static and crosstalk. This eliminates errors in voice, data and video transmissions such as garbled faxes. Greater durability. Optic fiber is nonmetallic and does not conduct electricity, so it isn't subject to cor TeDepfoone comes From the year 1890, when the first telephone conversation in the state of Utah took place until the present time of exciting progress in tele-communications, the story of Mountain States Telephone in Utah has been one full of historical novelty. It took only three yean from the time of the first complete telephone tele-phone message in history for the "talking instrument" to reach Utah. A.M. Musser, a leader in the building build-ing of the Deseret Telegraph Line, secured rights to introduce the telephone tele-phone in a demonstration in Salt Lake City. The demonstration conversation con-versation was between the home of L.E Holden, who lived on South Temple Street in Salt Lake City, and Fort Douglas. According to a Deseret News story, the conversation conversa-tion over the line was "astonishing," "astonish-ing," and the rumbling of a wagon passing in the street was plainly heard. Although Utah's first telephoning telephon-ing was done in Salt Lake City, Ogden played the role of pioneer in the state's telephonic development develop-ment The first telephone exchange was established there in 1880 under the leadership of A.J. Pattison. On March 1 of that year. Trying to keep up with the whirlwind of technology for the new mi Relax. ...... We've got ya covered! Wireless Cellular PCS paginci Long Distance Service I I'lAlOMMl MOMHS All your communications technology. one stop! rosion or decomposition from electrical elec-trical current passing through it It is not affected by water, or extreme heat or cold. Easier installation and maintenance. mainte-nance. A finger-width grouping of fiber cables replaces a fist-size bundle bun-dle of copper wires. More reliable service. Needs . fewer splices and points of signal regeneration along the cable route, which helps maintain high quality . transmissions. Digital signals have similar advantages over the analog waves that have electrically transmitted voice over telephone wires and broadcast signals over the air. Along with more economy, greater reliability and clearer trans Pattison secured license from the National Bell Telephone Company to operate a telephone exchange in Ogden and five miles therefrom under the name of the Ogden Telephone Exchange Company. Within three years, telephone service serv-ice had expanded to include separate sepa-rate exchanges in Salt Lake City, Logan and Provo. By 1881, three telephone companies compa-nies had been organized in the state, including the Ogden Telephone Exchange Company, A.J. Pattison and Company of Salt Lake City, and the Utah Telephone Company. The latter, with Pattison as one of its directors, was organized to take over the other telephone exchanges in the state. In less than two years, this company was responsible for the operation of the telephone exchanges in Salt Lake City, Ogden and Logan, and work had started on the Provo exchange. In 1883, the Rocky Mountain Bell Telephone Company, with headquarters head-quarters in Salt Lake City, was incorporated under the laws of Utah. It obtained rights from the American Bell Telephone Company to serve Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Utah. This company grew rapidly, rap-idly, with acquisition of the Park tmmm Digital Wireless Paging ---''V Digital Satellite ; Internet Access . Long Distance Your Home Phone COMMUNI C ATI 435-646-5007 435-722-5007 DSS Satellite Television I1BIA CUMMI JNICAI'IONS Internet & network Services J IIIA .MXtt NU.UUX Ifolbeir missions, digital technology increases the network's capacity; That's partly because related technology, tech-nology, still evolving, allows for better routing of transmissions and even enough compression of the data to allow it to be sent over copper cop-per wire for shot distances. s. Because of this, utilities may not have to build the most expensive part of the national information highway the connections between millions of homes and the digital switch at the curb or telephone tele-phone pole where the initial installation instal-lation of optic fiber will end. Not having to do that could save billions and speed up completion of the nation's network by a decade, experts say. tio Utialto City Exchange and the Wyoming Telephone and Telegraph Company. Then, in 1911, it became part of the Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph Company with headquarters in Denver. Telephone facilities in the early 1880s were crude in comparison to modern equipment today. In fact, one Rocky Mountain newspaper described the young industry as "The New System of Galvanic Muttering Machines." Another newspaper, the "Ogden Junction," provided brief instruction on the use of the telephone: "Every telephone has its particular particu-lar call. It is not necessary for any party to take notice of any call not their own. When your call is sounded, sound-ed, answer by ringing back your number of rings, or call, before tak-N ing the telephone off the hook. If you signal the central office and don't get an immediate answer, wait a reasonable time and then ring again. If the operator does not answer you at once, he is engaged with some other party and will wait on you in your turn. When you do get an answer, tell who you want to communicate with. 'Wait a minute will be the reply. " , 7 ONS IC1 |