150 years ago, the telegraph united a continent

This undated photo shows the Morse-Vail telegraph register, the first telegraph instrument which was used to receive the message "What Hath God Wrought" on the experimental line between Washington, DC and Baltimore, Md., on May 24, 1844. 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.

In this 1861-dated artist's rendering, a pony express rider greets Western Union linemen as they string wires of the first transcontinental telegraph. 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.

This circa 1863 photo provided by the U.S. Library of Congress shows a repairman working on a telegraph line in the United States. Just a few years after the nation was wired, telegraph technology would be extended to the rest of North America, and soon cylindrical wires from Mexico to Canada would jangle with little bursts of electromagnetic juice, sending messages of every kind and redefining how communication can mean business.

This photograph from the Library of Congress provided by Abrams Books shows a 1864 photograph titled "Field telegraph station, Wilcox's Landing, Va., vicinity of Charles City Court House." The Pony Express, which boasted it could deliver a letter from Sacramento to St. Joseph, Missouri, in the unheard of time of 10 days when it began operations on April 3, 1860, shut down 19 months later - on the same day the transcontinental telegraph went live.

This circa 1900 photo provided by the U.S. Library of Congress shows a group of Western Union Messengers in Norfolk, Va.

Just as the iPad, the iPod and the personal computer had a visionary genius behind them in Steve Jobs, the telegraph had one in Samuel F.B. Morse. Visionary genius of Samuel F.B. Morse A painter and part-time inventor who twice ran unsuccessfully for mayor of New York, Samuel F.B. Morse was in his early 40s in 1831 when he came up with the idea for the telegraph. He said in his papers at the Library of Congress that it was inspired by a discussion about electromagnetics with a fellow passenger on an ocean liner.

In this March 22, 1940 file photo, Thomas Midgley Jr., right, chairman of the Board of American Chemical Society, demonstrates the original morse telegraph machine to Conway P. Coe, U.S. Commissioner of Patents, in Washington, D.C.

In this 1942 file photo, delivery clerk Joe Martinez gives messages for delivery by Isaac Anzaroot, Shirley Braisted, Mary Leggiaordro and Sheila Burns at Postal Telegraph-Cable Company's Radio City office in New York. Throughout the nation, women are filling the gaps as telegraph messengers.

This circa 1917 file photo shows cable telegraphers at the New York offices of The Associated Press.