From the Pony Express (1860) to the mobile phone (1991) to Zoom (2021), business as usual for Holohan Lane LLP Solicitors.

No, we in Holohan Lane LLP have not been around since the Pony Express but I have been around to see office technology move from the days of the desk phone and the telex on to the fax machine, the mobile telephone and the era of computers using Zoom and similar technologies. 

Long before the world had mobile / cell phones there was the Pony Express and 161 years ago today on 3 April in 1860 the Pony Express began carrying mail between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California. The delivery system in fact only lasted only 18 months before giving way to the telegraph. Movies about it continued far longer.

It was a mail service delivering messages, letters, documents, newspapers, and mail using relays of horse-mounted riders and it only operated from April 3, 1860, to October 26, 1861, between Missouri and California. No doubt innovative US lawyers made use of the system to deliver their letters and documents.

Operated by Central Overland California and Pikes Peak Express Company, the Pony Express was of great financial importance to the U.S. During its 18 months of operation, it reduced the time for messages to travel between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to about 10 days. It became the West's most direct means of east-west communication before the first US transcontinental telegraph was established, (October 24, 1861), and was vital for tying the new U.S. state of California with the rest of the United States.

Pushing the physical limits of man and beast, the Pony Express ran nonstop. During a typical shift, a rider traveled 75 to 100 miles, changing horses every 10 to 15 miles at relief stations along the route. Station keepers and stock tenders ensured that changes between horses and riders were synchronized so that no time was wasted. For their dangerous and grueling work riders received between $100 and $125 per month. A few riders with unusually treacherous routes were paid $150, more than twice the salary of the average station worker. Summer deliveries averaged ten days, while winter deliveries required twelve to sixteen days, approximately half the time needed by stagecoach. The Express logged its fastest time delivering President Lincoln’s first inaugural address–seven days and seventeen hours.

Some 200 horsemen rode for the Pony Express. Most were in their late teens and early twenties and small in stature. Famous riders included William “Buffalo Bill” Cody and Robert “Pony Bob” Haslam. You can read a firsthand account of the Pony Express, by former rider George S. Stiers in American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936 to 1940 at : https://www.loc.gov/item/wpalh002423/  

Despite a heavy subsidy, the Pony Express was not a financial success and went bankrupt in 18 months, when the faster telegraph service was established. Nevertheless, it demonstrated that a unified transcontinental system of communications could be established and operated year-round. When replaced by the telegraph, the Pony Express quickly became romanticized and became part of the lore of the American West. Its reliance on the ability and endurance of individual young, hardy riders and fast horses was seen as evidence of rugged American individualism of the frontier times.

The first message sent by telegraph "What God hath wrought" had been transmitted by Samuel Finley Morse in Washington USA and repeated back by Vail in Baltimore USA in 1844, and later in 1844 the earliest known telegraph line in Ireland was installed on the Dalkey Atmospheric Railway. The first cross-channel telegraph line from Dover to Calais was laid down in 1850 and the first Irish - UK telegraph cable was completed between Holyhead and Dublin in 1852.

The first attempt at laying a transatlantic cable was in 1857 and the first message between British Monarch Queen Victoria and US President James Buchanan was in 1858. 

On October 24, 1861, the workers of the Western Union Telegraph Company linked the eastern and western telegraph networks of the nation at Salt Lake City, Utah, completing a transcontinental line that for the first time allowing for instantaneous communication between Washington, D.C., and San Francisco. Stephen J. Field, Chief Justice of California, sent the first transcontinental telegram to President Abraham Lincoln, predicting that the new communication link would help ensure the loyalty of the western states to the Union during the Civil War.

This technological advance was pioneered by inventor Samuel F. B. Morse, of Morse Code fame. Only two days later, on October 26, The Pony Express, the horseback mail service that had previously provided the fastest means of communication between the eastern and western United States officially closed.

It was on 3 April in 1973, 48 years ago today, that the 1st mobile phone call was made in downtown Manhattan, New York City USA by Motorola employee Martin Cooper to the Bell Labs headquarters in New Jersey using a prototype of what would become the Motorola DynaTAC 8000x. His inaugural mobile conversation probably doesn't compare to the first telegram ("What hath God wrought"), first telephone call ("Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you"), or even the first text message ("Merry Christmas") and is remembered as, "I'm ringing you just to see if my call sounds good at your end". Cooper and the first 40 years of mobile phones looked something like this:

I acquired my first mobile phone, also a Motorola, in April 1991, exactly 30 years ago this week and I remember it cost the princely sum of IR￡3,000, but it was one of the best investments ever made given that I was operating between Dublin and Cork. Strangely, if people rang the Dublin office and was told I was in Cork, or vice versa, they wouldn't incur the cost of a Subscriber Trunk Dial call to Cork or Dublin as the case may be, but would happily phone me on the mobile telephone number at 10 times the cost of the STD call. The investment paid off in no time, all because of clients being able to communicate with me easily.

In 1998, I established my own firm and invested in the use of the latest mobile and digital technology, case management systems and speech recognition software. In 2004, Vodafone featured me in an ad campaign, on the basis that I was a user of the latest mobile technology for both phones and computers.

(Back then I had a full head of hair, and it was red!)

For many years, we in Holohan Lane LLP Solicitors have been equipped for mobile/remote connections to the office allowing staff to operate from home and access the Cork and Dublin offices remotely, so when COVID19 hit there was no difficulty for our staff to continue working from their homes in Bandon County Cork, Cork City, Dublin City, Athlone Co Westmeath and Wexford, so for us, for the past year, it has very much been "Business As Usual", even if most meetings are now on Zoom rather than face to face.