OCT 23: Transcontinental Telegraph Nears Completion

This week in 1861, the first transcontinental telegraph line nears completion at Salt Lake City, the result of an effort by Hiram Sibley and Western Union to connect California to the telegraph networks of the east.

Sibley was born Feb. 6, 1807, in North Adams, Mass., and was a founder and president of the Western Union Telegraph Company.

Western Union president Hiram Sibley.

In a visit to Washington, D.C., he met Samuel F.B. Morse, the telegraph inventor, and helped get congressional backing for the construction of the first telegraph line in 1844. In 1851 Sibley and other Rochester, N.Y. citizens formed the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company, which bought 11 small lines north of the Ohio River. In 1856 the company was renamed the Western Union Telegraph Company, and Sibley became its president.

After the first transcontinental telegraph line was completed on Oct. 24, 1861, Sibley continued to lead Western Union until he left in 1865 and became a builder of railroads in the Midwest and South, and owner of vast farm holdings. He also established the Sibley College of Mechanic Arts Engineering (later Mechanical Engineering) at Cornell University.

Sibley died on July 12, 1888, in Rochester, N.Y.