America was on the verge of civil war and needed a reliable connection between the North and South. On the telegraph market of the USA at this time were operated with six large companies: American Telegraph Company, New York Albany and Buffalo Electro-Magnetic Telegraph Company, Atlantic and Ohio Telegraph, Illinois & Mississippi Telegraph Company, New Orleans & Ohio Telegraph Company, and the brainchild of Sibley & Co. - The Western Union Telegraph. In 1860 the U.S. Congress arranged among the telegraph companies a competition to create a national line. The winner was Western Union. In April 1851 companions registered in Albany New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company (NYMVPTC), which included founded two years before New York State Printing Telegraph Company. The size of the commission fee for the transfer is charged according to the Western Union tariffs and depends on the amount of money sent. In October 2006 the company made an initial public offering of shares on the New York Stock Exchange, becoming independent from First Data company. In 1864, fearing the laying of long underwater lines, Western Union offered to carry out laying of telegraph lines to Europe through the Russian Alaska under the narrow Bering Strait and then to Siberia with branching in the major cities of Europe. Western Union incomes for 2007 have made $4,9 billion US dollars, and the quantity of transactions has made 572 million. In 1884 Western Union has become a joint-stock company and was brought to the stock exchange. The company has entered in the first American stock index Dow Jones. Sibley, the founder of Western Union, did not build a new telegraph lines, and persuaded the other players to join. American Telegraph Company, however, still had to buy it. Western Union made so that the time in all of American civil services was the same.