Timeline for Could someone who sent a letter in 19th century London expect a reply within 2 hours?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
28 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Dec 2, 2019 at 12:42 | vote | accept | Nzall | ||
| May 30, 2017 at 16:47 | comment | added | Django Reinhardt | @Oddthinking I think the addition of the word "typically" is what has made it clearer for me. Cheers. | |
| May 30, 2017 at 14:14 | comment | added | Oddthinking♦ | @Django: Interesting. You also interpret the (also fuzzy) term "feasible" differently to me. The dictionary I checked agrees with you. I have made some subtle changes to the language to hopefully make it less unclear. What do you think? (Happy to see a counter-edit if you are unhappy.) | |
| May 30, 2017 at 14:12 | history | edited | Oddthinking♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Tried to clarify in response to comments.
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| May 30, 2017 at 13:12 | comment | added | Django Reinhardt | @Oddthinking I think this is what's confusing me about what you've written. You say it's "feasible", which means "possible and practical to do easily or conveniently" -- which is precisely how I read the original claim. I read it like I would this: "In the 20th century a sender of an electronic mail could expect a response within minutes." It emphasises what's important about the claim without making it unrealistic. Even though 99.9% of emails I send do not get a reply so quickly, it's not unreasonable to say this as a way of explaining the speed of the technology to someone from another era. | |
| May 30, 2017 at 11:29 | comment | added | Oddthinking♦ | @DjangoReinhardt: I think we are agreeing on the facts, but disagreeing on definitions of terms. Obviously, an unrealistic person could expect to get an answer within 5 seconds, but that makes the claim almost tautological. I am reading "could expect" to mean within a typical or common range of outcomes. I am interpreting the evidence to suggest a 2 hour response time wouldn't be common, but might be an occasional outlier. | |
| May 30, 2017 at 10:19 | comment | added | Django Reinhardt | Things to have gotten lost here. My point is that the sentence is contradictory: "This doesn't support the idea that a response might be expected within two hours, but it does suggest that such response times would be feasible on a good day". An expectation is nothing more than a belief. So, given that "such response times would be feasible on a good day", a person might well believe they could get a reply within two hours. | |
| May 30, 2017 at 10:06 | comment | added | David Richerby | @DjangoReinhardt I haven't said anything that suggests we're talking about tense. In particular, I've drifted between "could expect" and "can expect", precisely because the tense is irrelevant. | |
| May 30, 2017 at 10:00 | comment | added | Django Reinhardt | @DavidRicherby We're not talking about tense. Also, if you think "possibly expect" is an oxymoron, you might be confused about the definition of "expect". | |
| May 30, 2017 at 9:59 | comment | added | David Richerby | @DjangoReinhardt There is no difference in meaning between "you could expect to see punks" and "you expected to see punks". "You could expect" doesn't mean "maybe you'd expect; maybe you wouldn't." | |
| May 30, 2017 at 9:50 | comment | added | Django Reinhardt | @DavidRicherby Your point makes little sense in relation to mine. Consider: "When travelling through a major British city in the 1980s, you could expect to see young people dressed as 'punks'" vs "When travelling through a major British city in the 1980s, it was guaranteed you would see young people dressed as 'punks'". | |
| May 28, 2017 at 17:10 | comment | added | Oddthinking♦ | @DavidRicherby: The answer tries to address that - it appears local mail can be collected, sorted, and delivered in under 1hr 15m. | |
| May 28, 2017 at 17:04 | comment | added | David Richerby | @NuclearWang Even your six hours seems optimistic, as you've not allowed any time for the mail to be sorted. | |
| May 28, 2017 at 17:03 | comment | added | David Richerby | @DjangoReinhardt No, "You can expect X" means exactly the same thing as "you expect X". You seem to think it means "You expect possibly X", which is a contradiction in terms. | |
| May 26, 2017 at 16:14 | comment | added | Eph | @DjangoReinhardt I could expect it in five minutes. I would be wrong every time, but I could still keep on doing it... taking the op's quote literally to the letter even feasibility is irrelevant. | |
| May 26, 2017 at 10:57 | comment | added | Django Reinhardt | Quote: "This doesn't support the idea that a response might be expected within two hours, but it does suggest that such response times would be feasible on a good day." It seems to imply that you read the original statement as someone should expect a response in that time, and so therefore there is something incorrect about it, when really it's only suggesting the second half of your statement. Does that make any more sense? In short: It seems your research supports the possibility of the statement being true. | |
| May 26, 2017 at 6:00 | comment | added | Oddthinking♦ | @DjangoReinhardt: I have to admit I didn't quite follow that. I don't think I have misinterpreted it, but if I have, I need further explanation, sorry. | |
| May 25, 2017 at 14:43 | comment | added | Django Reinhardt | The original comment says "you could expect", meaning it was possible, depending on the recipient and the culture of the time. That shouldn't be misread as should expect. | |
| May 24, 2017 at 17:11 | comment | added | Oddthinking♦ | @dsollen: Again, I largely agree. "This doesn't support the idea that a response might be expected within two hours" However, if the winds were aligned, you might be one of the earlier people in delivery, and get a letter in less than an hour, it might sometimes happen. Further, even if it fails to be technically true, it validates the surprising idea that in an era before the motor car, postal delivery times were much faster than today. | |
| May 24, 2017 at 16:10 | comment | added | dsollen | I would point out that this falsifies the claim, at least for any of the districts you were able to site. Since all your quotes suggest more then an hour from letter completion to delivery time, and even an instantaneous reply would have to be relayed back again. Two relay trips (to and from) of each more then an hour means that a response within two hours isn't possible no matter how responsive the receiver was. | |
| May 24, 2017 at 2:08 | comment | added | Oddthinking♦ | @NuclearWang: I largely agree. I think the claim is essentially wrong because - based on these figures - you couldn't expect to get a response in two hours. But if someone is responding to a pre-addressed RSVP - e.g. zero turn-around - it is feasible it might happen when the timings lined up perfectly. | |
| May 23, 2017 at 20:07 | comment | added | Nuclear Hoagie | @Mark - I only mention handing the letter to the mail carrier because it minimizes the wait time. You could of course leave it in the mailbox, but would then have to wait additional time between "mailing" the letter and actually having it go somewhere. And unless mail is delivered every 40 minutes, you're still not hitting the 2 hour mark stated by the OP. | |
| May 23, 2017 at 19:53 | comment | added | mmmmmm | @NuclearWang you don't hand mail to the mail carrier and note the comment in the answer after A source from 1879 giving an example of under 2 hours | |
| May 23, 2017 at 19:28 | comment | added | Nuclear Hoagie | This data actually suggests that a 2 hour turnaround time is not possible. It appears that mail is collected/delivered approximately every 2 hours. If I hand my letter to the mail carrier as he arrives, it will take about 2 hours to arrive at the recipient. Unless he writes a response on the spot, he'll have wait another 2 hours to mail the reply, which will take another 2 hours to deliver. So, the minimum expected time to receive a reply is closer to 6 hours, not 2. Including the time needed to write a reply, one requires three cycles of dropoff/pickup, however long they may be. | |
| May 23, 2017 at 18:00 | comment | added | T. Sar | That mail system was actually better than some current-day email services. | |
| May 23, 2017 at 15:22 | comment | added | GeoffAtkins | Terry Pratchett obviously borrowed heavily from the Victorian Post Office's regulations when writing Going Postal; as all of the quotes in your answer seemed eerily familiar. | |
| May 23, 2017 at 14:58 | comment | added | Avery | I should try reading Twitter this way | |
| May 23, 2017 at 14:40 | history | answered | Oddthinking♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |