[jacquesm]

It's not like the pace of science is glacial either, which was what the ggp attempted to say.

Really, that's a wild exaggeration, in the last 30 years alone there has been so much technological progress it's staggering.

So sure, let's add the 25 years from 1844 to 1869 to include the telegraph.

[Nick_C]

Just to push it back a bit further, revolutionary France and particularly Napoleonic France established a country-wide system of mechanical telegraph stations. They especially wanted it to warn of British naval attacks, but also for any military news.

It worked pretty well, transmitting, for example, a distance of about 200km (125mi) in about 9 minutes. The Brits would sail up and down the coast and fire on stations when they were feeling bored and mischievous.

Interestingly, Hooke (Newton's compatriot) proposed a similar system a couple of hundred years earlier, but the British military chiefs displayed their usual insight and did not take it up.