[ih] Comments re the packet radio discussion

[Nigel Roberts]

In (some parts of? London there were (I think) up to four deliveries per 
day.

As a  very small child in the 1960s I (very vaguely) remember there 
being a morning and an afternoon post in our village in the N. of England.



On 4/30/26 22:16, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history wrote:
> On 27-Apr-26 14:13, Bob Purvy via Internet-history wrote:
>> I once heard that in Victorian England, at least some parts of it, the 
>> post
>> was delivered four times a day.
> 
> That was certainly the case within London, but it wouldn't work intercity.
> (The Penny Post was introduced in 1840.)
> 
> There are surviving letters between Babbage and Lovelace, for example, that
> indicate quite rapid interaction. But they were rich people who could 
> likely
> order a servant to deliver a letter on demand.
> 
> I seem to remember that some Sherlock Holmes stories indicate very rapid
> postal deliveries within London.
> 
>      Brian
> 
>> Thus you *could* carry on a lengthy debate
>> with someone that only took a few days. Does anyone have a link to data
>> like that?
>>
>> I was also wondering what the average time was to get a Reply to a 
>> question
>> under that system. Nowadays it *might *be only seconds sometimes, but 
>> for a
>> lot of people the average email response time is still measured in days.
>>
>> On Sun, Apr 26, 2026 at 12:46 AM Yannis KOROVESIS/COROVESIS via
>> Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Going further back than the Victorians wikipedia has the following about
>>> "fryktoria" (translated from the Greek original ) as you suspect:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> https://el-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/ 
>>> %CE%A6%CF%81%CF%85%CE%BA%CF%84%CF%89%CF%81%CE%AF%CE%B1? 
>>> _x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=el&_x_tr_pto=wapp
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>   Yannis
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>   On Apr 22, 2026, at 5:14 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
>>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>   I recently visited Tom Standage’s blog post about The Victorian 
>>> Internet <
>>> https://tomstandage.wordpress.com/books/the-victorian-internet/> and
>>> noticed that he mentioned that Andrew Odlyzko <
>>> https://www-users.cse.umn.edu/~odlyzko/> had read it.  Odlyzko’s name
>>> also came up in some literature about the origins of Tier 1 ISPs.  He 
>>> used
>>> to post here occasionally.  You might find some of the Internet system
>>> level analysis you’re looking for in his papers.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>   --gregbo
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>   --
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-- 
Dr Nigel Roberts BSc LLB CEng CITP FBCS FRSA, Director
CHANNELISLES.NET, Maison Postel, Ollivier St, Alderney GY9 3TD
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