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BY JOE HOLLEMAN • [email protected]

From Stltoday.com

This circa 1863 photo provided by the U.S. Library of Congress shows a repairman working on a telegraph line in the United States. One hundred fifty years ago, as the nation was being ripped apart by Civil War, it was being knitted together electronically by what was arguably the world's first high-tech gadget, the humble telegraph. On Oct. 24, 1861, with just the push of a button Stephen J. Field would send a message from a telegraph office in San Francisco to President Abraham Lincoln in Washington, telling him the first transcontinental telegraph line was up and running. (AP Photo/Library of Congress) 

(AP)  LOS ANGELES — Long before there was an Internet or an iPad, before people were social networking and instant messaging, Americans had already gotten wired.

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.

Americans soon saw that a breakthrough in the spread of technology could enhance national identity and, just as today, that it could vastly change lives.
"It was huge," says Amy Fischer, archivist for Western Union, which strung the line across mountains, canyons and tribal lands to make the final connection. "... With the Civil War just a few months old, the idea that California, the growing cities of California, could talk to Washington and the East Coast in real time was huge. It's hard to overstate the impact of that."

A new iPhone application aims to bring Virginia's history to the digital generation.

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