Monday marks the 150th anniversary of the completion of the transcontinental telegraph. From sea to sea, it electronically knitted together a nation that was simultaneously tearing itself apart, North and South, in the Civil War.
On Oct. 24, 1861, with the push of a button, California's chief justice, Stephen J. Field, wired a message from San Francisco to President Abraham Lincoln in Washington, congratulating him on the transcontinental telegraph's completion that day. He added the wish that it would be a "means of strengthening the attachment which binds both the East and the West to the Union."
A rudimentary version of the Internet — not much more advanced than two tin cans and a string — had been born. But it worked, and it grew.
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All I can add is most of us here found it quite exciting once the news made out to the farm.