In this 1942 file photo, delivery clerk Joe Martinez gives messages for delivery by Isaac Anzaroot, Shirley Braisted, Mary Leggiaordro and Sheila Burns at Postal Telegraph-Cable Company's Radio City office in New York. Throughout the nation, women are filling the gaps as telegraph messengers. One hundred fifty years ago, as the nation was being ripped apart by Civil War, it was being knitted together electronically by what was arguably the world's first high-tech gadget, the humble telegraph. On Oct. 24, 1861, with just the push of a button Stephen J. Field would send a message from a telegraph office in San Francisco to President Abraham Lincoln in Washington, telling him the first transcontinental telegraph line was up and running. (AP Photo/Bob Wands)