Western Union has taken of 451st position in the rating Fortune 500 in 2009, having moved from 473rd line in 2008. In 1860 the U.S. Congress arranged among the telegraph companies a competition to create a national line. The winner was Western Union. Another invention of Western Union - time synchronization. In 1914 Western Union engineers invented the first payment card - a prototype of the modern credit card. In the summer of 1990 top managers of the Western Union Company spent day and night in the main office in Englewood (Colorado, USA). They needed to meet the challenge: to save the Western Union from bankruptcy, paying off the debts of the company millions of dollars.