"Isn't it amazing the way the future succeeds in creating an appropriate past?" - John Leonard
This Week in History presents summaries of a few selected historical events for each calendar week of the year.
October 26 - Riding off into the sunset (1861)
The handsome young lad was almost as exhausted as his horse. They had been galloping for hours but the band of fierce Apache warriors was still close behind. If his valiant steed could keep going for just another ten miles, he would reach the safety of the fort.
As he raced past Dead Man's Bluff, three grim figures suddenly appeared on the trail ahead, bandanas drawn up to cover all but their eyes: bandits! No doubt they were after the gold in his saddlebags and wouldn't hesitate to kill him for the fortune he carried. With murderous villains ahead and merciless natives behind, his doom appeared certain.
Then he noticed a faint deer track in the woods to the left. Yanking the reins and spurring his mount to even greater urgency, he fled his pursuers through the dark forest. The pounding of hoofbeats and the fusillade of bullets impacting in the trees around him meant at least one pack of foes was gaining ground. As he burst forth into a clearing, his heart sank with despair. The far side of the glade bordered a jagged ravine and there was nowhere to hide.
He remembered his oath that no matter what the risk to himself, the mail must go through. The youthful Pony Express rider found his courage and beseeched his faithful companion "You must leap as if our lives depend on it, noble Windchaser, for indeed they do!" With a final powerful thrust of his legs, the magnificent beast hurtled into the void...
Such was the daily life of the riders of the Pony Express. Well, at least that was daily life as painted in the vivid scenes of adventure novels and western movies. Tales of heroic derring-do fired the imaginations of millions of boys and girls to yearn for a life of daring deeds and glorious escapades.
The reality of life as a Pony Express rider was much more prosaic. The romantic history of the Pony Express has been embellished almost since the day it was founded. For example, it was Hollywood that created the myth that the Pony Express recruited orphans as riders, to spare grieving families their all-too-likely demise on a job that defied death at every turn.
Johnny Fry, the first rider of the Pony Express, set out westward from St. Joseph, Missouri in the evening of April 3, 1860, to the cheers of assembled citizens lining his route. On the other side of the continent, Harry Roff, embarked from Sacramento, California, on his route eastbound. Because horses can gallop all day only in movies and literature, the riders proceeded at a slower but steady pace that would ensure the health of their mounts; on average, riders traveled about 10 mph over their designated segments of the route.
Eleven days later, on April 14, the riders returned to their original stations carrying the mail which had crossed the western half of the country in both directions, proving that the Pony Express could indeed deliver on its promise to cut the transit time of mail from many weeks or even months to a mere ten or eleven days.
Keep reading below the orange historical marker about the Pony Express and more events during the last days of October and the first of November.
It was an incredible achievement and required a complex operation. With the threat of civil war looming, both government and business had been eager to find a way to shorten communications to the most distant parts of the nation. The largest wagon freight company of the time, Russell, Majors and Waddell, proposed a novel solution: establishing a system of outposts and relay riders dedicated exclusively as a mail courier service. Over the first few months of 1860, they mapped out a route, built or acquired 184 stations, hired 120 riders and purchased 400 horses. Their new enterprise would be named the Central Overland California and Pikes Peak Express Company but the public immediately christened it the Pony Express.
The Pony Express trail originated from St. Joseph, where rail and telegraph lines terminated, crossing the plains, rivers, mountains and desert of the U.S. territories all the way to California, remote and isolated from its fellow states. Home stations, where a rider would transfer his mochila (mail pouch) to a waiting rider and rest before his return journey, were about 60-120 miles apart. Along the way, every 10 to 15 miles, he would change horses at a relay station.
Postmark from Johnny Fry's first dispatch of the Pony Express
By April, everything was in place for Johnny Fry's historic departure. The young men chosen as riders, all of slight build so as not to weigh down the horses, carried up to 40 pounds in their
mochilas, including the mail as well as a revolver and a water container. The selected mounts were small but sturdy, although many were a little too tall to technically be called ponies (height is the main difference between horses and ponies).
There were indeed hazards for the messengers along the 1,966 mile route. Weather was the most common danger, from blinding blizzards to rain-swollen rivers to parching desert suns. If a rider or his horse was injured, help was often nowhere to be found.
Contrary to popular tales, riders faced little risk from desperados seeking to rob them of gold; the messengers carried only letters, of little value to anyone but the recipients. At $5 per half ounce ($149 in today's dollars), the cost of transport by Pony Express would have devoured more than half the value of gold.
Similarly, Native Americans had little interest in lone riders traversing their extensive domains. The exception arose during the Pyramid Lake War of 1860, triggered by the kidnap and rape of two Paiute girls. During the conflict, stations were attacked and Pony Express riders were accompanied by U.S. cavalry forces. The Paiute war was the cause for the longest ride by any messenger: Robert Haslam rode 380 miles over 36 hours, double his normal journey and back when the next relay rider refused to go due to fears of the uprising.
Along with its claim to fame for speed, the Pony Express also lived up to its motto: "The mail must go through." During its existence, only one mail pouch was lost; even that was eventually recovered and the letters were delivered to their destination two years late.
The Pony Express was a tremendous success in the public eye but a financial disaster for its backers. They didn't get the exclusive government contract for mail which they had hoped for; it was awarded to a slower rival, a stagecoach line. With the outbreak of the Civil War, there was much less commerce, and thus less need for expensive express communication, between the warring East and the distant West.
Pony Express messenger riding past construction of the Transcontinental Telegraph - click to embiggen
The real downfall of the Pony Express was technology. Just two months after the inauguration of the Pony Express service, Congress authorized the Post Office to create a transcontinental telegraph system. Awarded the contract, the Western Union company rapidly constructed lines extending from the existing terminuses in Missouri and California, joining up in Salt Lake City on October 24, 1861.
1869 stamp commemorating the Pony Express
Two days later, on this day in 1861, the Pony Express shuttered its doors, made obsolete by a communication method cheaper and nearly instantaneous. Its run had lasted a mere year and a half. The Pony Express had blazed through American history like a shooting star, flaring brightly and just as quickly fading away. Nevertheless, the nation honored its historic contributions: the Post Office issued a stamp in 1869 depicting a Pony Express rider, the first U.S. stamp ever to feature someone other than a deceased statesman.
When the Civil War broke out, Johnny Fry left the Pony Express to sign up as a Union courier. On October 6, 1863, Fry was killed in the Battle of Baxter Springs, serving the sundered country which his historic ride had once united in coast-to-coast correspondence.
The last Pony Express courier rode off into legend more than a century and a half ago but the Pony Express itself will live forever in the dreams of adventurous boys and girls everywhere.
October 29 - The internet's grandpappy is born (1969)
Fire, agriculture, pottery, metalworking, and printing. These discoveries and inventions would probably top anyone's list of the most important advances in human history. Our descendants may one day add another item to the list: the internet.
If we broaden our definition a bit to include cell phones, which often use packet-switching, the internet has become the indispensable backbone of modern society. Our web browsing, emailing and Youtubing are merely the most public face of the internet; the behind-the-scenes action, like an ATM contacting your bank to authorize a withdrawal or monitoring the status and operations of power plants, enables a lifestyle our recent ancestors could never have imagined.
The key to all of this is the most minor of things, an idea which few people have ever heard of: packet-switching, briefly mentioned above. In traditional telecommunications, every connection made was direct and continuous: you dialed your Aunt Mabel and the phone company opened and closed circuits to create and maintain an unbroken physical connection to her phone for the duration of the call.
J. C. R. Licklider
In packet-switching, that nice logical concept is tossed out the window. Information, whether it is a single letter
A typed on your keyboard or a bit of the sound of your voice saying
Ma, the first part of Mabel, is grouped together in a packet of electronic data. That packet is then sent to its destination, perhaps Aunt Mabel's computer where she is voice chatting with you via Skype.
Unlike with a direct physical connection, the packets are sent via whatever route is most convenient and open at that instant. So, perhaps one syllable passes through Boston while others get routed via Chicago or New York. Her computer accepts the packets and inserts them into their proper places with other packets to make an unbroken stream of sound, resulting in How are you, Aunt Mabel? All of this happens very very fast, of course, so we rarely even notice any slight delay for the transit and "assembly" time.
Her PC can do this because it understands how packets work and because the packets themselves contain the information necessary to be reassembled in their correct order. Otherwise, your favorite aunt might hear Aunt you? Ma How bel are, and she would complain that things were more reliable in the good old days when Alexander Graham Bell knew how to make a proper phone.
This revolutionary idea made the internet possible. Any device can connect with any other device, no matter where it is located in the world, even while it is in motion and no physical connection is possible. Even more important, perhaps, is that any single cable, wire or other transmission medium can be shared: all kinds of packets from any number of sources can pass through it, to be routed to different respective destinations and reassembled properly when they get there.
It all began back in the 1960s with two visionaries: J. C. R. Licklider, who dreamed up the idea of a network of interlinked computers, and Leonard Kleinrock, who laid out a conceptual foundation for packet-switching in his doctoral disseratation at MIT.
One of the cutting edge laboratories for technology at that time was the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), part of the U.S. Department of Defense. With atomic bombs and satellite launches and a race for the moon, it was obvious to government planners that applied science and technology would be critical to the security of the nation. President Eisenhower established ARPA in 1958 not to build more of what already existed but to do research into what was possible and discover the next big leaps in technology.
Interface Message Processor (IMP)
Both
Licklider and Kleinrock were eventually lured to ARPA's think-tank and development laboratories, the place to be for turning wild ideas into real-world projects. Defense strategists were enamored with the idea of packet-switched networks: in the event of nuclear war, with widespread destruction, a self-healing network that could find a way to reroute messages, as needed, to destinations would give the U.S. a huge advantage for survival.
Various teams worked on theories and practical application, building the many new types of devices and software that would be needed to implement the idea. One of the core technologies was the Interface Message Processor (IMP), an early sort of router, to handle the processing of the packets.
Computer nodes, to serve as both senders and receivers of data packets, were established at four locations: UCLA, Stanford, UCSB (University of California, Santa Barbara) and the University of Utah. On this day in 1969, the first successful communication on the network was established.
The very first attempt crashed the system. For some reason, as the researchers typed the first command, login, things ground to a halt after lo. After an hour or so to diagnose and repair the problem, the UCLA scientists succeeded in logging in to the Stanford computer. The internet was born.
Log of the first message sent on ARPANET
A permanent link between the two nodes was established in November and by December the remaining nodes were added, creating a fully functioning 4-node distributed network. Over the next few years, nodes all over the country were brought into the system as parts of the network known as ARPANET.
In 1983, the military split off their own network for defense purposes and ARPANET became a tool for civilian researchers and scientists. In time, its scope and use broadened, new technologies and protocols (rules and methods for communicating) were developed and even the network itself was transformed into what we call today "the internet", the vast, undefined and ubiquitous repository of the world's information and system for sharing that information.
November 1 - Bringing a slice of heaven to earth (1512)
Even non-Catholics know of the ritual that takes place upon the death of a pope. The cardinals gather in conclave, locked into a room until a new pope is elected. The crowds outside the Vatican peer into the sky above the rooftops, waiting for white smoke to signal "Habemus Papam!" (We have a Pope!).
Being interned would be a hardship for most of us, but the conclave is sequestered in one of the most beautiful places in the world: the fabulous Sistine Chapel.
Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
Constructed between 1473 and 1481, the chapel was built to be exactly that: a chapel where the pope and members of his household could pray and worship. The walls were decorated with paintings and frescoes based on the themes of
The Life of Moses and
The Life of Christ, created by such masters of Renaissance painting as Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Rosselli and Pietro Perugino, the teacher of Raphael.
For Pope Julius II, that wasn't enough. Julius was one of the greatest art patrons of the Renaissance. Famously, he had ordered the destruction of the existing St. Peter's Basilica and commissioned a new version to be built, destined to be the foremost masterpiece of Renaissance architecture. For his personal chapel, he sought out the man considered to be the greatest artist alive, Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti.
Michelangelo was famously stubborn about his artistic endeavors and the pope was just as strong-willed about his desires. The artist had already accepted a commission to sculpt Julius' future tomb and felt the chapel would distract him from that more important work. Moreover, Michelangelo considered himself more a sculptor than a painter (it may surprise you to learn that he was also a poet).
Julius wanted Michelangelo to paint the twelve apostles; Michelangelo wanted to paint whatever his creative mind came up with for the designated space, the vaulted ceiling of the chapel. In the end, the pope persuaded the artist to take on the task but the secular overcame the divine and Michelangelo was given free rein to follow his artistic vision.
The artist used a technique called fresco to paint the chapel ceiling. In this method, pigment is applied to fresh wet plaster, mixing with the plaster and thus becoming part of the wall or ceiling itself when it dries. It is a challenging technique to use but has the great advantage of permanence, unlike painting which merely sits atop the surface, to flake off or otherwise be damaged with time.
He boldly filled the central section with nine panels reflecting three great themes: the creation of the earth, the creation of mankind, and mankind's fall from grace. The Creation of Adam, the most famous piece of the entire ceiling, belongs to the second group and is revered as one of the great treasures of art.
The Creation of Adam - click to embiggen
Surrounding the central triptych, Michelangelo painted prophets and patriarchs of the Bible, ancestors of Jesus, and even sibyls from classical Greek mythology. Altogether there are over 300 figures in more than 5,000 square feet of fresco. He accomplished all of this in four and one-half years, working alone, beginning in 1508.
On this day in 1512, the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel were officially declared complete and received their first public viewing. We have no contemporary records of the event but one can only imagine the gasps of wonder and awe they inspired. Both painter and pope must have felt pride and deep satisfaction in the result of their partnership.
Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel were fated to be linked together anew though. More than twenty years later, Pope Clement VII summoned the Florentine artist to Rome again, this time to use his talents on the wall behind the altar. Michelangelo worked on the new masterpiece from 1535 to 1541, the stunning work known as The Last Judgment.
The Last Judgment
Some of the churchmen were offended by the nudity depicted and a campaign began to force Michelangelo to use fig leaves or even remove the entire fresco. In revenge, he painted one of the chief instigators, Biagio da Cesena, into the scene as the judge of the underworld. When da Cesena complained to the pope, he replied that he had no jurisdiction in hell and therefore could not order the painting changed. Nevertheless, the prudes eventually won: after Michelangelo died, Daniele da Volterra, a painter he had once mentored, was hired to add fig leaves and loincloths in the cause of modesty.
As for that tomb designed for Pope Julius II? Michelangelo labored on it for forty years but was never satisfied with his work. I doubt that Julius was perturbed, realizing that he had gotten the very best the master had to give, a timeless jewel that would be linked with his own name throughout the centuries.
And that's the news for this week in history. Goodnight, and have a pleasant tomorrow.