Another great purchase I lucked out on was a Western Union call box. I have always wanted one of these but they are usually very high priced even in damaged condition. Mine has some scrapes, rust and a cracked turn knob but it was all there and works like a dream. It came off of a Chicago department store the person said when they were tearing it down. Even with the damage, I touched it up with paint marker and can get a repo knob for it so are very happy. I found a patent for a similar box dated 1915 for Western Union. It is US 1,164,069. I could find little info on how these work but here is what I found out. A place would have a box that when the knob was turned a wheel inside would run against a metal strip sending a code to a Western Union key sounder. Then a message person would go to that boxes location, get the message and return to Western Union station to send it. It's no wonder when the telephone became more popular that these fell out of favour. I couldn't imagine someone running around just to get a message and then return to send it. But it happened. You can see in the bottom picture the gears and wheel. So far I have found 24 different versions of the message call box by Western Union, Postal Telegraph, Canadian and some Radio Stations on the internet.