From the Pony Express to Nanotechnology – A Brief 150 Years

Last week there was a significant anniversary that went by largely unreported. April 3, 2010 marked the 150th anniversary of the first Pony Express ride.  The Pony Express is a pretty interesting part of American history. Although it only existed for about a year and a half it was an important link from east to west during a very transitory time in U.S. history. During this time, Manifest Destiny a.k.a. colonialism was in full swing, the Gold Rush was going bananas and this was also a time when the Civil War was heating up.

Before 1860 the only ways to get mail from Missouri to California was either by stagecoach (25 days) or via ship around the tip of South America (30 days). Everyone sort of knew around this time that railroads and telegraphs would become more efficient, but until that happened, the Pony Express filled the gap.

In a short two months during 1860, 156 Pony Express stations were built, 120 riders were hired and 400 horses were purchased. The riders were typically young men (under 20) and weighed about 120 pounds. 15 year old Buffalo Bill Cody was one of them. They had to be light in order to travel quickly and not afraid of the treacherous route. At this time in the U.S., the Indian Wars were still going on and the Pauite Indians in Utah and Nevada killed several riders as revenge for white settlers killing off the Native American’s antelope in large numbers. One of the posters advertising for the job of rider stated that orphans were preferred for the job. Riders usually rode in 75 mile stretches and the horses were switched out every 10-15 miles along the 2000 mile route. There were two departures a week and it cost 1-5 dollars to send a letter.

The Pony Express ended because the company did not manage to land the U.S. Postal Service contract and when the transcontinental telegraph was completed, the Pony Express shut down completely. Even though the U.S. Postal Service uses the Pony Express logo, there never was a connection between the two entities.

Flash forward 150 years, we largely communicate via email and by phones that we carry in our pockets. The U.S. Postal Service is now losing so much money that they are considering dropping Saturday services. And technology is getting better and smaller. A recent article in the New York Times announced that Hewlitt Packard is working with a device called a memristor that is going to revolutionize technology. Although the memristor was invented in 1970 it was not put into application until 2008, so it’s not exactly new, even though its use is.

What this chip aims to do is switch from using transistors as computer chips (currently used in MP3 players, cameras, and laptops) to tiny switches that would shrink the scale down to an atomic level. And they operate more like a human brain. I’m not even going to try to pretend that I know anything about nanotechnology. You can read the whole article here.

It’s strange and interesting to mull over how a short time ago we used to send people flying across the land on horseback which was such an ambitious, physical feat. Now we create tiny, invisible chips that mimic our minds. What will the next 150 years bring? What inventions will make nanotechnology seem as overly complicated and cumbersome as riding a horse across a desolate landscape in the middle of winter while people try to kill you? I’m hoping for teleportation. I hate sitting in traffic.

Sources: here and here

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