Email In the 18th Century

morphovar forwards a writeup in Low-tech Magazine recounting an almost-forgotten predecessor to email and packet-switched messaging: the optical telegraph. The article maps out some of the European networks but provides no details of those built in North America in the early 1800s. Man-in-the-middle attacks were dead easy. "More than 200 years ago it was already possible to send messages throughout Europe and America at the speed of an airplane — wireless and without need for electricity. The optical telegraph network consisted of a chain of towers ... placed 5 to 20 kilometers apart from each other. Every tower had a telegrapher, looking through a telescope at the previous tower in the chain. If the semaphore on that tower was put into a certain position, the telegrapher copied that symbol on his own tower. A message could be transmitted from Amsterdam to Venice in one hour's time. A few years before, a messenger on a horse would have needed at least a month's time to do the same."

Comments

Postal mail used to be pretty good, too.

[Kadin2048]

I was reading something recently that discussed the US Postal Service in the late 19th century. In some major cities, like New York and Boston, the mail used to come as much as five times a day. That meant you could write to someone (local, served from the same Post Office) in the early morning, have it picked up in the first round, delivered in the second, have their reply picked up in the third, and delivered on the fourth. (And you could even send a reply back in the final pickup for delivery the next morning.) That's pretty good -- some people I know don't even check their email that often!

If you wanted service and delivery times that good these days, you'd need to go with a courier service.

Re:Postal mail used to be pretty good, too.

[iocat]

I remember reading an article a few years ago, on various companies' ettiquette for the term "email." Some caled it 'email,' some called it 'electronic mail,' some called it by a quaint brand name ('QuickMail', anyone?). The article noted that at Micorosoft, it was simply refered to as "mail." So the author asked the inevitable question: "What do you call something that comes in a physical envelope?" The answer? "FedEx."

Anyway, there is a good book called The Victorian Internet that, despite its suspect name, is extremely well written and goes into great and fascinating depth on the telegraph (optical and electronic), as well as the pro-tech savvy of the Victorian age. I'm too lazy to put in a link for you, but I assure you, the google or the amazon can give you all the details.

Clacks!

[orkysoft]

Those are the clacks! Did they have c-commerce back then, too? And clacksites?

Semaphores and smoke signals are ancient

[davidwr]

Native American smoke signals date back to pre-Columbian times.

Torches and and other forms of optical telegraphy date back to ancient times.

Thanks to the seminal work of J. Hofmueller and his colleagues, modern flag semaphores can also be used to encapsulate IP datagrams. Presumably, this is more efficient than delivering the same traffic by animal transport but less efficient than by wire or radio.

Telegraph Hill in San Francisco

[ortcutt]

Telegraph Hill in San Francisco was at one time the site of an optical telegraph. Hence the name.

The hill owes its current name to a semaphore, a windmill-like structure erected in September 1849, for the purpose of signaling to the rest of the city the nature of the ships entering the Golden Gate. Atop the newly-built house, the marine telegraph consisted of a pole with two raisable arms that could form various configurations, each corresponding a specific meaning: steamer, sailing boat, etc. The information was used by observers operating for financiers, merchants, wholesalers and speculators. As some of these information consumers would know the nature of the cargo carried by the ship they could quickly predict the upcoming (generally lower) local prices for those goods and commodities carried. Those who did not have advance information on the cargo might pay a too-high price from a merchant unloading his stock of a commodity -- a price that was about to drop. On October 18, 1850, the ship Oregon signaled to the hill as it was entering the Golden Gate the news of California's recently acquired statehood.

Telegraph Hill

The Victorian Internet

[blamanj]

Tom Standage's book covered this quite well.

Re:Spam?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Ah, yes, Claude Chappe's optical telegraph. :-) Nice that people still remember these. You can also read about them here. The part about the system cost compared to the electric telegraph is really interesting. It is not very suprising that this system was ultimately replaced soon after electrical telegraphs had become available. (One has to ask why Czech Post - providing virtually the same quality of service - has not yet seen the same fate? ;-))

Fax History

[Tablizer]

Perhaps slightly off-topic, but its interesting how long the fax machine has been around. From wikipedia:

Scottish inventor Alexander Bain is often credited with the first fax patent in 1843. He used his knowledge of electric clock pendulums to produce a back-and-forth line-by-line scanning mechanism.

Frederick Bakewell made several improvements on Bain's design and demonstrated the device at the 1851 Great Exhibition in London.

In 1861, the first fax machine, Pantelegraph, was sold by Giovanni Caselli, even before the invention of workable telephones.

Horses versus humans

[Tablizer]

Article: Humans or horses can maintain a speed of 5 or 6 kilometres an hour for long distances.

It may defy common sense, but a runner in top shape can almost match the pace of a horse over long distances. There used to be a yearly contest in England, and a human sometimes won. Our ancestors used to chase down pray by outlasting them in the heat (some isolated tribes still do). Our sweating system keeps us cooler than hairy animals. However, it may be more economical to wear out a horse than a human. Plus, a horse can carry more.

Re:Horses versus humans

[ucblockhead]

Plus, a single person can switch horses. That's how the Pony Express worked, and it's how people could make 200 miles a day even in classical times.

Chappe's telegraph and buiding of a fortune

[franois-do]

According to a legend that I did not verify, one of the Rotschild's became immensely rich because he knew before anybody else in London about the defeat of Napoleon in Waterloo : according to that legend, he bought a lot of stocks & shares because they were quite low, and could sell them when the news reached the press.

I am not sure it is true because the Chappe code was normally secret, so looking at the signs coould not really help. The operators themselves did not undertand what they were transmitting.

As our Italian friends say Si non e vero... ;-)

Re:Chappe's telegraph and buiding of a fortune

[instarx]

actually, the story was more interesting
-Rothschilds get information early
-other people know rothschilds get the information early
-rothschilds dump all their stock
-everyone else dumps their stock
-stock crashes
-rothschilds buy everything

massive stock manipulation, but I guess that was legal back then.

Actually this would be perfectly legal today. Getting public information faster than everyone else is smart, not illegal; and there is noting illegal about selling stock to drive the price down and then snapping up deals. Market-makers do it every day to shake out margin traders.

Re:Progress

[c6gunner]

With such a poor understanding of economics, it's surprising you were ever able to afford a computer!