On October 24th, 157 years ago, the first transcontinental telegraph line was completed, connecting the east coast with the west. Nearly eight years before the cross-country railroad was finished, it was a spectacular achievement for 1861. Construction (from the ends of the existing lines; Omaha, Nebraska and Carson City, Nevada) took about 6 months.
 
At the time, the quickest way to get a message from New York to California was via the Pony Express which ran from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento (a ten day trip). Anxious for more timely cross-country communication, the federal government offered a subsidy of $40,000 a year (for ten years) to any company who could build and maintain the line across mountains, prairies, plains and deserts. The Western Union Telegraph Company accepted the challenge ~
 
 

The obstacles were daunting. Wire, insulators, and other materials for the line’s western portion would be shipped around Cape Horn to San Francisco. Supplies would have to be pulled by ox team over the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains. Vast stretches of plains contained “not a stick of timber in sight,” as one builder put it, so telegraph poles would have to be hauled hundreds of miles. On top of all that, the outbreak of the Civil War cast shadows of uncertainty on the project […]
 
On October 24, the work complete, Chief Justice of California Stephen J. Field, in San Francisco, sent the first transcontinental telegram to President Lincoln in Washington, D.C., The message assured Lincoln that the line “will be the means of strengthening the attachment which binds both East and West to the Union.”

Source: The American Patriot’s Almanac – William J. Bennett & John T.E. Cribb

In today’s era of rapid technological change it’s difficult to imagine that it once took weeks to communicate from one side of the country to the other. The transcontinental telegraph changed that overnight. We don’t always appreciate the amazing advances that happen almost daily now. But imagine what the builders of that first line would think of a text message traveling instantly through the atmosphere to the other side of the world – not to mention Skype!