The repercussions of technological change

The capacity of a job, a service or any other activity is determined by the system it uses. The organization of a process through a particular technology necessarily conditions the results. If these results are to be improved, technical improvements can be introduced into the system. This will bring some progress, but it will be limited, because there are limits that cannot be exceeded. The way for the results of the process to improve significantly is not improvement or reform, but a change of system. This is precisely what Herman Hollerith achieved in 1890 with the application of rudimentary computing techniques to the preparation of the United States census. Computing is a very appropriate field for understanding the repercussions of a change in technology. Nevertheless, another example can also be given of a system that became legendary: the urgent postal transport service inaugurated by the Pony Express in the United States of America.

The Pony Express

The San Francisco area, in the United States, was full of activity in the second half of the 19th century. However, it remained relatively isolated from the rest of the country. Mail took around six weeks to cover the distance separating the Pacific coast from the Atlantic coast. News was excessively delayed. In fact, the route followed by postal services, for orographic reasons, passed through the Isthmus of Panama, and with this detour they gained time. In 1860, an advertisement was published in a San Francisco newspaper requesting young riders, preferably orphans, willing to risk their lives for twenty-five dollars a week. The advertisement would serve to recruit personnel for the Pony Express, an urgent postal service that was about to be created at that moment and that has become legendary. That same year it was already operating: hundreds of horses, riders and relay stations. Mail time was reduced to the astonishing figure of ten days, at a rate of 125 kilometers per day and per rider. The route ran between Sacramento, California, and Saint Joseph, Missouri.

Despite this, the Pony Express lasted only a year and a half, from April 1860 to October 1861. The reason for this brief life was the appearance of a much faster competitor: the telegraph. And the Pony Express faded away. The question was this: the superiority of the Pony Express over ordinary mail was unquestionable, but how could the ten-day barrier be broken? How could this limit be considerably improved? It was possible, of course, to increase the number of riders and relay stations, choose faster horses, although small and fast horses were already available, reduce the distances covered by riders and horses… and little else. Hours, and perhaps even a day, could possibly be gained. But its limits were real and immovable because, from the beginning, the routes had been designed to obtain the maximum from horse and rider, launched into a frenzied race.

It should be noted that, anecdotally, some exceptional feats took place. One of them was performed by Bill Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill. He was one of those young men who were not intimidated by danger and had joined the mail posts. On one occasion he covered more than five hundred kilometers in a single day. For reasons related to the service, he galloped for almost twenty-four hours on different horses until he found the replacement rider, and then returned again to his original post. Of course, feats cannot be taken as a standard. The overcoming of the Pony Express’s limits came through a change in technology, through the appearance of telegraphy. From October 1861 onward, the first telegraph line connecting the ends of the continent, from east to west, was installed. From then on, urgent messages were telegraphed and information reached its destination with astonishing speed, practically immediately.

Hollerith’s system

Curiously, the situations of the Pony Express and Hollerith are very close in time and space. And, allowing for the differences, one explains the other. The population census carried out in 1880 required seven years of work, which meant that its data became obsolete. And what was more worrying, the time required tended to increase each decade, in keeping with the strong demographic growth and, consequently, the increase in data. There was a risk of entering a new census period without having completed the previous one. The organization of the census was manual. But with this, only the effects of population growth would be limited and the deadline would barely be reduced, since the organizational complication of a larger bureaucracy also had to be considered. The problem was overcome through the introduction of a new technological system. Hollerith developed his tabulating machine, which consisted of a card reader, a counter, a sorter and a tabulating device. And he completed the 1890 census in only two and a half years. Hollerith himself and his company, IBM, were responsible for this. The emergence of mechanical information processing in our society is a good model of the replacement of an exhausted system by another that is technologically superior. The example of Hollerith’s tabulating machine is eloquent. The same occurs within the field of computing. Its brilliant history presents similar situations, in which one stage is surpassed thanks to revolutionary inventions.