October marked 150th anniversary of the completion of the transcontinental telegraph line.

Pretty amazing that once it was completed, a person on the East Coast could actually communicate with someone on the West Coast 3,500 miles in minutes …

“The transcontinental telegraph put the Pony Express out of business in the literal click of a telegrapher’s key. That’s not an exaggeration,” says Christopher Corbett, author of “Orphans Preferred: The Twisted Truth and Lasting Legend of the Pony Express.”

Indeed, the Pony Express, which boasted it could deliver a letter from Sacramento to St. Joseph, Mo., 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.”

You can read more at MSNBC.com and the original telegraph machine (above) at the Cornell University Museum.

From that to ordering pizza while walking down the street.