If you lived in America in 1843 and wanted to communicate with someone in a distant state, you would have to send that person a written message delivered by land.

But that year, as noted on the official website of the House of Representatives, Congress approved $30,000 in spending "to test the feasibility of creating a telegraph system."

In 1838, five years before that appropriation, according to the House website, Samuel Morse had met with members of Congress in Washington, D.C., to show them how the telegraph machine he had invented worked. Then, in 1840, Morse received a patent for the device.

Four years later, an American telegraph system was born. "Surrounded by an audience of Congressmen," notes the House website, "Samuel Morse sent the first official telegraph from the Supreme Court Chamber, then located in the Capitol, to his partner, Alfred Vail, in Baltimore. He tapped the message, 'What hath God wrought!'"

Yet, as revolutionary as this technology was, the age of the telegraph did not last long.

Just 32 years later, Alexander Graham Bell received the first patent for a telephone. "Bell is known as the father of the telephone as his design was the first to be patented," notes the Library of Congress, "and it was Bell who continued the work beyond this patent to make a working device that would revolutionize the way we communicate."

"Bell was granted US Patent Number 174,465 for 'an improvement in Telegraphy' on March 7, 1876," notes the Library of Congress, "and it was on March........

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