[HN Gopher] Email Lessons from Napoleon
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Email Lessons from Napoleon
Author : hecubus
Score : 19 points
Date : 2020-11-30 20:40 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thesweetsetup.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (thesweetsetup.com)
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Clever, though it's worth noting that ping times circa 1812
| tended to be measured in weeks or months. Mail was likely
| _already_ three weeks old when delivered, urgency generally low.
|
| That said, reading two-week-old (or older!) news often has a
| similar effect --- much of the urgency or uncertainty has been
| resolved.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> that ping times circa 1812 tended to be measured in weeks or
| months.
|
| Nope. At least, not in France. Their ping times were measured
| in minutes and hours.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22909590
|
| "Napoleonic semaphore was the world's first telegraph network,
| carrying messages across 19h-Century France faster than ever
| before.[...] At its most extensive, it comprised 534 stations
| covering more than 5,000km (3,106 miles). Messages sent from
| Paris could reach the outer fringes of the country in a matter
| of three or four hours. Before, it had taken despatch riders on
| horseback a similar number of days."
|
| See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_telegraph
|
| "Credit for the first successful optical telegraph goes to the
| French engineer Claude Chappe and his brothers in 1792, who
| succeeded in covering France with a network of 556 stations
| stretching a total distance of 4,800 kilometres (3,000 mi). Le
| systeme Chappe was used for military and national
| communications until the 1850s."
|
| "A symbol sent from Paris took 2 minutes to reach Lille through
| 22 stations and 9 minutes to reach Lyon through 50 stations."
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Yes, the Chappe optical telegraph existed, but it had
| limitations:
|
| - Use was all but entirely limited to France. On campaign,
| mesages would revert to horseback.
|
| - It was stopped by inclement weather.
|
| - Net throughput was low, though I don't have a source on
| message traffic.
|
| - Messages would have been brief ... one might say
| _telegraphic_. Little detail could be conveyed.
|
| - Access was limited to government business. At least some of
| Napoleon's correspondents were likely denied access.
|
| As counsel to others, Napoleon's mail-handling protocol would
| be subject to the long transits I describe.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> On campaign, mesages would revert to horseback.
|
| Well, for the army. Naval semaphore (flags) could pass
| information across serious distance. Scout ships would
| often be over the horizon from flagships, their messages
| relayed back in minutes. The speed of pre-electric
| mechanical communication is underappreciated today.
|
| Also, carrier pigeons were faster than horses.
|
| "Messenger pigeons were used as early as 1150 in Baghdad[8]
| and also later by Genghis Khan. By 1167 a regular service
| between Baghdad and Syria had been established by Sultan
| Nur ad-Din.[9]"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homing_pigeon
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Fair point on pigeons. Mentioned as an example in Jon
| Bentley's _Programming Pearls_ , in active use between
| Mountain View and Santa Cruz as late as the 1970s.
| Reading the Wikipedia article, I'd not realised use dated
| back to pharonic Egypt!
|
| Still useful only between (or at least to) given
| established points, and adding new nodes took time.
|
| Consider that a critical advantage of the Germans over
| the French in Fall Rot, June, 1940, was radio-equipped
| tanks, enabling direct unit-to-unit comms and
| improvisation on the battlefield.
|
| Still, it's sobering that the Royal Road represented the
| plateau in long-distance information transmission for
| very nearly 2500 years:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Road
|
| I'll also highlight the key phrase _tended to be_ in my
| original comment.
| touisteur wrote:
| The original clacks! Terry Pratchett always finds ways to
| jump up when interesting factoids surface.
|
| Thanks for this tech history lesson, it might explain
| something about 19th century France that I didn't learn in
| (French) school.
| latexr wrote:
| > The term "triage" is frequently thrown around when dealing with
| email, but did you know it actually originated as a medical term
| during the Napoleonic wars?
|
| The author is making it sound like it's an outdated term. It's
| still in wide use today for medical emergencies, and I'd wager
| more people are familiar with the word in that context than as a
| way to sort email.
| derefr wrote:
| The charitable reading of that statement is that the fact that
| it's a medical term is presumed-known, while the fact that the
| term originated during the Napoleonic wars is presumed-novel.
| reidjs wrote:
| His stance towards email reminds me of the book "Deep Work" that
| many HN threads talk about. I liked the idea of triaging your
| emails into 3 categories
|
| Emails that will have a positive outcome regardless of when they
| are processed.
|
| Emails that will have a negative outcome regardless of when they
| are processed.
|
| Emails for which a timely response will make a difference.
| lmilcin wrote:
| Very frequently you are not a person that people won't mind you
| don't respond to them.
|
| I need to read every non-spam email I receive and give a
| response if only to keep people in my network.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| Do you triage your spam?
|
| What is the false positive ratio, do you think?
| sa46 wrote:
| Your first sentence is quite tricky to parse due to the
| triple negative. I parsed it as:
|
| Most people that email you will care if you ignore them.
| mulmen wrote:
| Is that a... triple negative?
|
| I think you mean senders expect a response?
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(page generated 2020-11-30 23:00 UTC)