[2] I heard this weekend that the world population will reach 7 billion people by the end of the week, so when I stumbled across this "In 60 Seconds" infographic while browsing the web I stopped and really thought about how communication has grown exponentially in the last 150 years.
In 1860-1861, the fastest communication method available in the U.S. was the Pony Express [3]. The express route from Missouri to California took 9 days and 23 hours to traverse. Alexander Graham Bell [4]invented the telephone in 1876, but the first transcontinental phone call wasn't possible till 1915. The first email was sent by Ray Tomlinson [5] in 1971 between two machines sitting only 10 feet apart, but didn't widely become available to the public until the late 80's to mid 90's. (Trivia fact: It was Tomlinson who decided to use the @ symbol within email addresses.)
Now we have billions of people sending approximately 168 million emails, 370, 000 Skype calls, 98 thousand tweets, and more - all in 60 seconds [6].
http://www.ponyexpress.org/history [3]
http://worldhistorysite.com/culttech.html [4]
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120364591 [5]
http://www.go-gulf.com/blog/60-seconds [6]
- Communication [7]
- Internet [8]
- web traffic [9]
- Website [10]
