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I'm with you on this. In 1850 there was a fax line from New York to Paris. At about the same time there were scheduled international flights from Germany to A

I'm with you on this. In 1850 there was a fax line from New York to Paris. At about the same time there were scheduled international flights from Germany to Argentina. Trains got up to 60mph around 1875. And of course telegrams could sent at the speed of light almost, the original email. Radio arrived in 1920 but newspapers had been collecting the world's news daily over telegrams for 50 years by then. Bicycles for personal local transportation happened in the late 1800's (and self driving horses before that). Things have changed a lot less than you would think from those times, though it is more evenly distributed now.

Animats 7y ago
Not quite. The first transatlantic cable was in 1858, but it could send only Morse code, and just barely. The first transatlantic telephone cable wasn't installed until 1956. Until then, transatlantic calls went over short-wave radio. The holdup was developing tubes with a long enough lifespan to be used in an underwater cable. The first transatlantic dirigible flight was in 1919. The first transatlantic aircraft flight (Lindburgh) was in 1927. Steel at low cost was an amazingly late invention. The Romans could have built a Bessemer converter. Now that would have changed history.