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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."
(Whoa, I clicked the wrong reply link? Just pretend the parent is a top-level post. ^_^ *blush*)
Ezekiel 23:20
Once again: the summary IS correct!!!!! The technology was invented in the 18th century, prior its introduction in the US in the 1800s, but does not discuss the latter. Is that so difficult to grab?
+1 for The Victorian Internet. A great read.