im watching a lecture and it was talking about two kings in like 1500 exchanging hella messages back and forth across the ocean in a short amount of time. how was it so efficient?
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Across an ocean in 1500, they were limited to the speed of a sailing ship. Over land, systems of relay stations were set up starting in the 18th century. They could send messages over the network quite quickly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_telegraph
The electrical telegraph was developed in the 19th century, and pretty quickly extended via undersea cables to link up the entire world.
Carrier pigeon were used in the middle ages which was probably the fastest way to send a message long distance.
On land riders on fresh horses could be used in a relay system.
Smoke signals which we’ve all seen in movies could also be used. A fire on one hill top could be seen by a lookout miles away who then lights a fire for the next lookout. This could get a simple message across many if not a hundred miles relatively quickly.
For kings sending messages across oceans though it was by boat and irl was not quick. It took days to weeks.
What do you mean by “quickly”? I mean, in 1776, it took 5 weeks for news of the American Declaration of Independence to reach London. I certainly wouldn’t call that quick; at least not by modern standards. You haven’t given us much to work with here. Where were these 2 kings? How many messages is “hella” messages? 5? 50? 500?
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