The following series of maps depicts the speed at which news traveled to Venice, fron 1500 to 1765. The isochronic lines represent one week, and give a broad indication of the time required for letters to reach their destination. All three maps describe the speed of letters traveling toward Venice.
Today, thanks to telephony and internet, this is all instantaneous. Kind of amazing how we went from weeks and weeks for news to get around, to mere seconds, in a matter of just several centuries. The moment I press ‘publish’ on this news item, it’s there in your browser, hitting the RSS feeds, going on Twitter.
It is really worth reading “The Victorian Internet” by Tom Standage. You will see how the electric telegraph changed the world and in many ways mirrored what we have experienced with the Internet.
One thing that made this really clear to me is:
Twitter is faster than earthquakes: https://xkcd.com/723/
When an earthquake occurs people tweet about it.
Earthquakes also ‘travels’ (it’s like a wave) and not slowly either.
But because of our communication systems: people can know that an earthquake is coming.
Important news actually travelled far faster than 2 mph by methods including horse mounted messengers (40-50 km/h), homing pigeons (100 km/h) and semaphore (hundreds of km/h). (Unofficial) news of Napoleons defeat at Waterloo reached London within a few hours.