Western Union accomplished the transcontinental telegraph, bridging communications between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans for the very first time — simply because the Civil Struggle tore aside north and south — on at the present time in historical past, Oct. 24, 1861. 

The strains from every coast had been joined in Salt Lake Metropolis. 

“The folks of California need to congratulate you upon completion of the nice work,” the state’s chief justice, Stephen J. Discipline, wrote within the absence of the governor to President Abraham Lincoln in Washington, D.C.

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“They imagine will probably be the technique of strengthening the attachment which bind each east and west to the Union. They need on this the primary message throughout the continent to specific their loyalty to that Union.”

“The folks of California need to congratulate you upon completion of the nice work,” California chief justice, Stephen J. Discipline, wrote within the absence of the governor to President Abraham Lincoln in Washington, D.C., within the first transcontinental telegraph message on Oct. 24, 1861. 
(Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Abraham Lincoln Papers)

The completion of the telegraph, making coast-to-coast communication sooner than ever, immediately rendered out of date the earlier technique of transcontinental communication and ended a brief however storied chapter in American historical past.

The transcontinental telegraph “would be the technique of strengthening the attachment which bind each east and west.”

“This technological advance, pioneered by inventor Samuel F.B. Morse, heralded the top of the Pony Categorical,” wrote the Library of Congress.

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“Solely two days later, on October 26, the horseback mail service that had beforehand offered the quickest technique of communication between the japanese and western United States formally closed.”

Pony Categorical rider passes the transcontinental telegraph line beneath development on this assembly of two epochs of communication in an 1861 drawing. The Pony Categorical was discontinued on Oct. 26, 1861, simply two days after the primary transcontinental telegraph was despatched from California to President Lincoln in Washington, D.C.
(Oregon Path Museum through Getty Pictures)

The Pony Categorical had been based solely 18 months earlier in April 1860. 

It took about 10 days in summer time and 16 days in winter to ship messages from St. Joseph, Missouri, to San Francisco. 

“The Categorical logged its quickest time delivering President Lincoln’s first inaugural deal with — seven days and 17 hours,” proclaimed the Library of Congress of the president’s March 4, 1861, ascension to the White Home. 

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“The push to create a transcontinental telegraph line had begun solely somewhat greater than 12 months earlier than when Congress approved a subsidy of $40,000 a 12 months to any firm constructing a telegraph line that will be part of the japanese and western networks,” wrote Historical past.com. 

The transcontinental telegraph rendered out of date the Pony Categorical. It was ended two days later.

“The Western Union Telegraph Firm, as its title suggests, took up the problem, and the corporate instantly started work on the essential hyperlink that will span the territory between the western fringe of Missouri and Salt Lake Metropolis.”

Illustration depicting Abraham Lincoln studying the draft of the Emancipation Proclamation to his cupboard in 1862 (undated). The president acquired the primary transcontinental telegraph on Oct. 24, 1861.
(Getty Pictures)

The transcontinental telegraph was one in every of a number of main milestones within the quest by the American folks to satisfy their Manifest Future and unite a nation from sea to shining sea.

Explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark discovered a land-and-water path to the Pacific Ocean after an 18-month journey from St. Louis on Nov. 15, 1805.

The transcontinental railroad was joined with the driving of a ceremonial final gold spike within the tracks on Could 10, 1869, in Promontory Level, Utah. 

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The Panama Canal was accomplished throughout the Central American nation’s slender isthmus on August 15, 1914. It related the oceans by sea for the primary time with out the lengthy, harmful journey across the Cape of Good Horn on the tip of South America.

Copy of an engraving celebrating the primary telegraphic message from California, exhibiting an angelic determine carrying a telegram that reads, “Could The Union Be Perpetual” whereas strolling alongside telegraph wires, Nov. 1861. The primary transcontinental telegraph line was inaugurated on Oct. 24, 1861.
(Photograph by Interim Archives/Getty Pictures)

U.S. Military pilots Lt. John A. Macready and Lt. Oakley G. Kelly accomplished the primary continuous transcontinental flight from Lengthy Island to San Diego on Could 3, 1923 — a journey that took 27 hours. 

The undertaking confronted quite a few challenges, amongst them the huge distances and lack of wanted sources and business in the midst of the continent. 

“Wire and glass insulators needed to be shipped by sea to San Francisco and carried eastward by horse-drawn wagons over the Sierra Nevada,” reported Historical past.com. 

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“Supplying the 1000’s of telegraph poles wanted was an equally daunting problem within the largely treeless Plains nation, and these too needed to be shipped from the western mountains.”