Encyclopedia Dubuque
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Affiliated with the Local History Network of the State Historical Society of Iowa, and the Iowa Museum Association.
MURRAY, S. Frank
MURRAY, S. Frank. (Dubuque, IA, November 4, 1918- ). President, Permit Express. Murray pioneered the field of facsimile transmission. In 1969 he was one of 125 applicants awarded fax territories by the Dallas-based Transceiver Corporation of America that was then establishing a facsimile network. The Murray Telafax territory reached to Iowa's northern counties and west to Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming.
By 1980 the Murray territory had expanded to Washington, Oregon, and Alaska on the Pacific Coast and the Rocky Mountain states of Nevada, Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho with the Canadian provinces of the Yukon Territory, Alberta, and British Columbia. The company became a twenty-four-hour, seven-day-a-week operation in 1981. In six years, Telafax was transmitting ten thousand permits each month and employed a staff of thirty-two with a network of three hundred fifty machines.
In December 1988, Murray sold Telafax Communications System. He remained president of Permit Express, a facsimile transmission company that orders trucking permits required by states and transmits them where they are needed.