Today we can sit at home, tap a few buttons and communicate with people all over the world.
How things have changed in 200 years.
In 1826, even posting a letter was a difficult enterprise, and for many, a rare occurrence.
Messengers on foot or on horseback carried written or verbal information.
There was a postal service, but it was very expensive.
In 1826, Rowland Hill suggested cheaper improvements.
The main reason for this was to keep families in touch.
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If a man left home to find work, his relatives might never hear from him again.
Hill reasoned that a cheap postal service would improve kinship ties, trade, education and literacy, so be good for the country.
When she became Queen in 1837, Victoria endorsed this and the Penny Post began in January 1840.
In 1848, the Electric Telegraph Company opened offices in London and the big cities using wires and morse code.
This quicker means of communication was run by the Post Office from 1870.
George Warren was appointed Court Telegraphist for the Royal Household.
He was experienced in telegraphing in French and German, as well as English, and was paid a special salary of £154 a year, rising to £210 by the time of his death in 1896.
What a position of responsibility!
All telegrams for Queen Victoria were received in Morse, and it was his job to translate them and send them “upstairs” to the Queen.
While Victoria was at Osborne, Warren lived in his home in East Cowes.
For 34 years he served the Queen, performing “high-class work and long hours of duty.”
George Warren was buried at Whippingham Church and given a substantial memorial stone by Queen Victoria as a mark of regard for “his faithful and zealous service.”
Around 150 years ago, another form of communication was invented.
Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone in December 1876.
In January 1877, he demonstrated it to Queen Victoria at Osborne House by installing a telephone wire to Osborne Cottage.
The Queen wrote: “Professor Bell explained the whole process, which is most extraordinary.
“It had been put in communication with Osborne Cottage, and we talked with Sir Thomas and Mary Biddulph… but it is rather faint, and one must hold the tube close to one’s ear.”
Around 130 years ago, Marconi was experimenting with wireless communication.
In 1897, Marconi set up his radio station on the Island, at the Needles, and transmitted messages across water for the first time, using a 168ft high mast.
A station was set up at Osborne the following year so Queen Victoria could keep in touch by wireless with her eldest son, who was convalescing aboard his yacht.
The Needles has another claim to fame in the world of communications.
The engines of the rockets built by Saunders Roe in East Cowes were tested on the headland above the Needles.
These rockets took the first British satellite, Prospero, into space in 1971.
Prospero was built by the British firm of Marconi.
Sadly, the British Government almost immediately pulled the plug on these satellite launchers.
Just when Britain was again leading the world in communication technology!
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