Before October
1861, it would have been possible for a banker in Salt Lake City to say that,
but anybody farther east would have been out of luck.
Just before the
start of the Civil War, telegraph lines
connected the East Coast to as far west as western Missouri, and the West Coast
could send messages by wire as far east as Salt Lake City. The central plains,
essentially what is now Kansas and Colorado, had no poles (no trees!) and no
wire.
Congress in
1860 offered a bounty of $40,000 a year to the first company that could connect
the East Coast and West Coast telegraph networks. Wire, glass insulators and
poles would have to be shipped by horse-drawn wagon from San Francisco to the construction
zone.
The Western
Union Telegraph Co. took up the challenge and completed the line to create the coast-to-coast communications channel which we have largely taken for granted
for the last 154 years. The transcontinental railroad wouldn’t be complete
until 1869.
Imagine the
reality of 1860. Imagine that your text message to your sweetie on the other
side of the country had to be copied out and carried by stagecoach or a horseman
through Kansas and Colorado, weather permitting.
Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2015 All rights reserved.
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