Oct 24, 1861: Western Union completes the first transcontinental telegraph line

[Valin]

History.com

 

On this day in 1861, workers of the Western Union Telegraph Company link the eastern and western telegraph networks of the nation at Salt Lake City, Utah, completing a transcontinental line that for the first time allows instantaneous communication between Washington, D.C., and San Francisco. Stephen J. Field, chief justice of California, sent the first transcontinental telegram to President Abraham Lincoln, predicting that the new communication link would help ensure the loyalty of the western states to the Union during the Civil War.

 

The push to create a transcontinental telegraph line had begun only a little more than year before when Congress authorized a subsidy of $40,000 a year to any company building a telegraph line that would join the eastern and western networks. The Western Union Telegraph Company, as its name suggests, took up the challenge, and the company immediately began work on the critical link that would span the territory between the western edge of Missouri and Salt Lake City.

 

(Snip)

 

Also

Thirty Years War ends

[Pepper]

@Valin

The Won would disagree, this is an intercontinental thingie

 

[Valin]

@Valin

The Won would disagree, this is an intercontinental thingie

 

 

 

You know, I was waiting for that! Talk about a hanging curve ball right across the plate!!!