Then & Now | How advent of the telegraph made Hong Kong a global communications hub – no more 6-week waits for mail from Europe to arrive
- People today can’t bear being deprived of mobile phone networking for even a few hours, yet mail from Europe to Hong Kong used to take four months to arrive
- The Suez Canal and steamships reduced the mail delivery time to six weeks, but it was the laying of international telegraphic cables that was transformative
Instant global communications across a variety of platforms are regarded as one of modern life’s most essential amenities. As many of those deprived of their mobile phone for a few hours would attest, jittery withdrawal symptoms from being outside immediately accessible interpersonal contact can be profoundly unsettling.
To many younger people, instant communications are considered so normal that a world in which such communications took days, if not weeks or months, is almost impossible to envision.
Some historical perspective into Hong Kong’s pioneering connections to rapid changes in international connectivity provides additional insight.
When physical mail was transported across the world, inevitably letters took time to arrive. Before the Suez Canal opened, in 1869, along with the advent of reliable steam-driven vessels, mail from Europe to the Far East took three to four months to arrive, via the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The new route reduced this time to around six weeks.
In tandem, scientific and medical innovations, such as anaesthetics and painkillers, antiseptics and disinfectants, potable water and artificial ice, all combined to make life in the tropics healthier than during any previous period in human history, and exponentially increased demand for faster flows of information.