The Telegraph, Connected

[Here I am, yet again unable to deal with present reality.]

I appreciate the BlueSky account of Vince Mpls, who usually posts about local history, and sometimes about history more broadly, including today, when he posted this:

Oct 24, 1861: The world's 1st transcontinental telegraph line is completed between existing networks east of the Mississippi River to California via Omaha and Salt Lake City. The astonishing speed of new communication made the Pony Express obsolete, which officially ended two years later.

I always take notice of significant events that happened during the Civil War that were not part of the war itself. One such was the 1862 Dakota War (which included the largest mass hanging in U.S. history), and another was the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre.

Connecting the transcontinental telegraph was obviously more pro-social than those two parts of the subjugation of the continent's Indigenous people. Which is not to say it didn't have a large effect on society. 

One of the first things I remember learning when I started mass communication grad school was that the telegraph was the first instance of disconnecting communication from transportation in human history. That's a bit of an exaggeration, since there had been smoke signals, warning drums, and signal fires before then: but in terms of fully detailed messages, it is correct.