A few people made note of the 10th anniversary of the iPod over the weekend.
That’s pretty nifty. But today is the 150th anniversary of the completion of the first transcontinental telegraph line, which is even more significant (in my humble opinion).
The article I linked above does a pretty good job of explaining the significance of the telegraph, especially by making an analogy with the Internet. It surprises me a little that the article doesn’t quote Tom Standage at all, however: his The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century’s On-line Pioneers
If you haven’t already read it, I enthusiastically recommend Standage’s book. He’s a good writer, and the early history of the telegraph is a fascinating subject. (For example, how much do you know about Thomas Edison, other than the standard facts? Did you ever realize Edison was basically a hacker? He was able to build Menlo Park out of the money he got for banging on early telegraph machines.)