What was the best way to spread information? Everything from news, gossip, and emergencies
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Slowly, for example england to the American colonies took 5 weeks to three months depending upon wind and such, but usually around 6-7 weeks.
From the fringes of rome, say Modern London to rome would have taken around a month one way on horseback. You’d be traveling a solid 3 times faster on horse than foot
The Telegraph and newspapers, news from point A would be send by telegraph to point B and then distributed to the public by newspaper. That system was the main communication method from 1830, when telegraph was invented, until the invention of better methods like radio and telephone.
The Telegraph was almost real time communion so if you had a telegraph cable that connected to distant points, like Lisboa in Portugal and Moscow in Russia you could send information almost instantly between the two points. One of the most expensive communication projects of the time was the construction of a trans-oceanic telegraph cable, it was relatively easy to connect any two places as long as there wasn’t a big water-body in the middle of your way but if you had say the Atlantic Ocean the project became really difficult and expensive, so for a long time communion was limited between Europe and the US, the news had to travel by ship.
I believe the print media/newspaper must have played a greater role at that point for the latest update on the things of national importance.
There is some interesting stuff in the link but to give a bit of a summary. Originally messages would travel at the speed of a human or the animal that could transport them ( or a ship at sea). But that wasn’t the limit before radio was invented because there was semaphore and telegraphy. Smoke signals were used on the Great Wall of China and by Native Americans , the Ancient Greeks used torches, the French and the English developed systems of semaphore using panels , flags , lights and shutters. The latter enabled a signal to be sent the 85 miles from London to the Portsmouth Naval base in 15 minutes. Pretty soon though telegraphy using morse code down a wire became the main form of quick long distance communication after developments in the US.
https://www.pens.co.uk/pen2paper/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/A-History-of-Telegraphy.pdf
Person on horseback, beacon fires and semaphore were all methods of transmitting information.
to give you a historical example:
>On **16 February 1568**, a sentence by the Pope of Rome and the Holy Office condemned all the inhabitants of the Netherlands to death as heretics.
>A proclamation by the King of Spain, **dated only 10 days later**, confirmed this decree to the Inquisition, and ordered all Spanish occupying troops to start carrying out instant executions, *”regardless of age, sex or condition”*.
>**Within 18 days**, the Pope’s verdict traveled *from Rome via Madrid to The Netherlands* and three million people, men, women and children, were sentenced to DEATH (in three lines of text).
>The first executions started **MARCH 5, 1568**
(distance by road about 3500 km / 2200 miles)
Another thing to put out here, newspapers were A LOT more prevalent in the 18th and 19th centuries since that was the only means of disseminating news. Particularly in the 19th century when the mass printing became available. This was also a time that saw a mass rise in literacy among the general populous. So instead of what we see now where a city will have one or two newspapers, cities would have dozens. Big cities like London and New York at times would have over 100. The reason they could support this many papers is that was the only way for most people to receive news. With the telegraph, the news could also spread faster, so reporters could run their own stories based on what they heard from the source.
Just an example, the hunt for Jack the Ripper and who he was has resurfaced in modern times thanks to many of these papers defunct for 100 years being digitized and available online. Reporters from around the world converged on London to each provide their own unique takes on it, and slivers of information can be uncovered from random papers which each reported different things. For example, a random reporter from San Francisco might have had an interview he printed in a story on that no one else did. Another random reporter from Kansas City added in something else. Another from Prague, etc. The problem being of course there’s no way to test the veracity of these stories, so we don’t know if the reporter was honest, the witness was honest, etc.
Pre-telegraph it was messenger and horseman. That was how mail got distributed but there were also express riders for urgent messages that would take half the time. Even so, info-lag was huge and often costly, such as in the case of the Battle of New Orleans (War of 1812) which was fought 18 days after the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, which formally ended the War of 1812, on December 24, 1814.
By horseback sometimes.
The battle of New Orleans was fought two weeks after the war of 1812 ended because news didn’t make it there in time.
You don’t know about telegraphs or paper??
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