Samuel Morse sent the first message from an electrical telegraph in 1844, from Washington, DC, to Baltimore. His message: “What hath God wrought?” Coinciding with the rise of the railroad, the telegraph profoundly changed communications by making it easier and faster to send near-instantaneous messages across long distances. In just six years, twelve thousand miles of cable crisscrossed the United States; by 1861, Western Union had finished work on the first telegraph line that reached the East Coast from the West. In 1929, at its apex, Western Union transmitted more than 200 million telegrams.