In 1843 the U.S. Congress appropriated $30,000 to fund an experimental telegraph line from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore. On 24 May 1844, after the line was completed, Morse made the first public demonstration of his telegraph by sending a message: The famous message was: What hath God wrought
As the transcontinental telegraph was laid it passed through Nebraska where Republican sympathizers prior to American Civil War were eager to gain statehood for Nevada before the next presidential election so that Abraham Lincoln would have enough votes to win.
They rushed to send the entire state constitution by telegraph to the United States Congress, which approved it and sent it to the President for signature. They did not believe sending it by train would guarantee it would arrive on time. The constitution was sent on October 31, just 8 days before the election on November 7, 1864.
In many instances, applications of the electrical telegraph in the long period between its invention and demise as a significant carrier of information, were similar to current day Internet. This has prompted the sobriquet "Victorian Internet" for 19th century telegraphy. According to the book The Victorian Internet, besides news reporting, telegraphy, as the first true global network, permitted applications such as message routing, social networking (between Morse operators?with gossiping and even marriages among operators were celebrated via telegraph), instant messaging, cryptography and text coding, abbreviated language slang, network security experts, hackers, wire fraud, mailing lists, spamming, e-commerce, stock exchange minute-by-minute reports (via the ticker tape machine invented by Thomas Alva Edison), and many others. ...............................
