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1830
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There are 23 miles of railroad in the United States.
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1844
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May 11: Samuel Morse sends the first long-distance telegraph message from Supreme Court chambers in Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, ushering in a new era in communication.
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1850
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September 20: President Millard Fillmore signs the first Railroad Land Grant Act. By encouraging railroad construction in undeveloped territories, particularly in the South and West, the government hopes to attract settlers, increase taxable wealth, and unify and strengthen the growing nation.
There are now 9,000 miles of railroad in the United States.
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1851
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Telegraphs are now used for dispatching trains.
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1853
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The growing railroad industry attracts energetic young employees like the Scottish immigrant Andrew Carnegie, who launches his career at the Pennsylvania Railroad as a $35-per-month telegraph operator.
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1856
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In England, Henry Bessemer develops the Bessemer converter, which enables steel to be manufactured inexpensively, an accomplishment for which he is knighted in 1879. The process will be introduced in Troy, New York, nine years later.
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1860
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There are now 30,000 miles of railroad in the United States.
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1861
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The Civil Warbegins. It will be the first war in which railroads play a significant role in transporting soldiers and equipment.
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1862
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July 1: Congress authorizes the construction of a transcontinental railroad with federal land grants under the first Pacific Railway Act. The Union Pacific will build westward from Omaha, the Central Pacific eastward from Sacramento. In addition, the legislation grants the railroads 10 sections of public domain lands on both sides of the railway. Two years later, the second Pacific Railway Act doubles the size of federal land grants.
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1865
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The first domestic steel rails are produced. Steel rails are costly; only the lines with heavy traffic can afford to put them in place. By 1890, the majority of all railroad mileage will be laid with steel rails.
The first railroad sleeping car, designed by George Pullman, appears in the United States. When one of Pullman's cars is attached to the funeral train carrying Abraham Lincoln's body in April, demand for them skyrockets. Two years later Pullman will introduce the refrigerator car.
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1866
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October 6: In Jackson County, Indiana, the Reno Gang, a band of outlaw brothers, is credited with the first organized transcontinental train robbery in history. In the aftermath of the Civil War, law enforcement officials and passengers consider train robberies a serious threat.
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1869
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Between 1869 and 1894, five transcontinental railroads will be completed. Transcontinental railroads of the time do not run from coast to coast, but from the Missouri River to the West Coast.
April: 23-year-old George Westinghouse receives a patent for the air brake, which allows trains to stop with fail-safe accuracy. Though skeptics initially ridicule the invention, which earns Westinghouse the nickname "Crazy George," it is quickly embraced, and in July Westinghouse forms the Westinghouse Air Brake Company to manufacture them.
April 28: Central Pacific workers build an astounding ten miles of track in one day, racing to meet the Union Pacific and complete the first transcontinental railroad.
May 10: Union Pacific and Central Pacific officials drive the golden spike at Promontory Summit, in the Utah territory. The spike is connected to a telegraph line, which sends out word of the first transcontinental rail route's completion.
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1870
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There are now 53,000 of railroad in the United States.
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1871
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The federal government discontinues its Railroad Land Grant policy.
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1878
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Without any federal assistance, and facing enormous geographic hurdles, railroad builder James J. Hill commences the expansion of his St. Paul, Minnesota-based railroad (which will become the Great Northern Railway Company) across the rugged terrain of the Pacific Northwest.
1879 Thomas Edison and English Inventor Joseph Wilson Swan independently devist the first practical electric lights
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1880
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There are now 93,000 of railroad in the United States.
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