Silver State Musings: Nevada on cutting edge of period technology at statehood

What is the longest email you've ever written and sent to someone? Were they afraid to read it? Were you?

I've written some doozies in my time, but they were never quite the novella that the original Nevada State Constitution was; 175 transcribed pages transmitted entirely by telegraph wire.

The state constitution, required for the United States Congress to ratify statehood of the Nevada Territory, took two entire days to reach Washington, D.C., from Carson City, where Territorial Gov. James W. Nye ordered the document be sent across the country over the telegraph wire.

Certified copies of the state constitution, 44 hand-written pages of 17-by-24-inch paper, had already been sent to Washington, D.C., by overland mail and by sea. But both trips were long and arduous. Neither arrived in the nation's capital by Oct. 24, 1864, so Gov. Nye decided to transcribe the entire document — all 16,543 words — and submit it to Congress via telegraph.

The telegraph was cutting edge technology for its day, the precursor to modern telephone and cable lines. Heck, the telegram was the email of its day.

So effective was the telegraph at its inception that wires were quickly erected coast-to-coast. The Pony Express was still delivering the mail, a 10-day journey on horseback, between Sacramento, CA, and St. Joseph, MO, when the transcontinental telegraph line was constructed across the western frontier.

By the time that the American Civil War erupted in April 1861, the telegraph was already in use. Armies on both sides utilized its efficiency and effectiveness to their strategic advantage.

Words, phrases and sentences were sent over a telegraph wire using a transcription format called Morse Code, named after Samuel Morse, the inventor credited with developing the telegraph.

Morse Code transmitted alphanumeric characters over the wire using a series of short and long click combinations, which were then written down and decoded by the telegrapher.

As one who suffers from painful bilateral carpal tunnel syndrome, I can appreciate how a telegrapher's hands and fingers must have felt at the end of a shift.

Now imagine being tasked with sending the longest transcription ever recorded to-date. That duty was given by Gov. Nye to Carson City Telegraph Office Superintendent James H. Guild, whose messengers, Hodge and Ward, began transmitting on Oct. 26, 1864.

Guild's telegraphers labored for anywhere from 7-12 hours to transmit the gargantuan telegraph message, sending the massive transcription to the telegraph office in Salt Lake City, UT, where it was relayed to Chicago, IL, and Philadelphia, PA, before finally being received by the War Department in Washington, D.C., late in the evening on Oct. 27, 1864.

The message had to be received, decoded and transcribed for transmission again at each relay point.

The entire Nevada Constitution took two entire days to transmit across nearly 3,000 miles of telegraph wire. This was done despite 2,000 miles of frontier wilderness and an entire country at war against itself.

U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, days away from a hotly contested re-election bid, then issued the statehood proclamation three days after receiving the 175-page telegram. The Nevada Constitution was ratified by an act of Congress on Oct. 31, 1864 and — presto — Nevada became the 36th state admitted to the Union.

Cost of the telegraphed Nevada Constitution was more than $4,300 at that time. Adjusted for today's dollar, that amount would have been equivalent to more than $59,200.

For 17 years, the Nevada Constitution held the distinction of being the largest known telegraph message ever sent before the 118,000-word English Standard Version of the New Testament of the Holy Bible was transmitted over the Trans-Atlantic Cable from London, England, to New York and then Chicago on May 21, 1881.

Whether the largest or runner-up, transmission of the Nevada Constitution across an entire continent was quite a feat for its day.

My publisher has occasionally chided me about the length of my writing. My prose, admittedly exhausting to read from time to time, is not even in the same league as the historic telegram containing the Nevada Constitution. Mine also doesn't cost even a smidge of what Gov. Nye had ordered sent over the telegraph wires.

And I don't bill by the word, either.

— Information courtesy the National Archives and Nevada State Archives