Communications have been an essential part of both business and private life for centuries and the advancement in communication is perhaps the single most important step Man has taken in recent times.California has played a leading role in many era; it saw the Gold Rush in the middle of the nineteenth century and over a century later Silicon Valley as it was nicknamed in the North of the State below San Francisco was generally perceived to be the centre of new technology and hosts many of the world's leading companies involved in technology. It is ironic how communication and its development also have a thread through this same part of the USA.

We now take the internet for granted despite its existence for such a short time. It is possible to instantly make contact with anyone in the World and the ability to transfer big files has meant that business can be conducted whilst the parties can be continents apart. The only limiting factor are the different time zones in the World and it is frankly more than unlikely that Man can do anything about them.

In the middle of the nineteenth century in the USA, anyone with a horse could be a messenger, anyone with a team and a wagon could set up as a company handling messages post and documents. The names of Wells Fargo and the Pony Express spring to mind for anyone who watched those classic westerns at the cinema.

The Gold Rush increased the need for an express industry and also for banking, and Wells Fargo's future was mapped out by its financial dealings. Communications were still slow but the wire and telegraphy at least provided the ability to send fairly quick messages from one place to another as long as there were trained telegraph men at either end who understood the codes and could translate the signals back into words. That did not solve the problem of documentation however whether legal contracts, confidential business information, perhaps as important as the actual movement of money and gold; hence the branches of Wells Fargo that not only acted as the delivery boy but also entered the financial world where it still exists today.

California has remained a prosperous state ever since and at the forefront of technological advance. The stages of improvement in communication may be seen as fairly rapid if taken on a scale from the birth of civilisation to today but they were painfully slow when seen in the context of how things changed over night with the advent of the internet. The ability to transfer big files from one corner of the Earth to another instantly has taken away the need for so many things; expensive and extensive air travel is just one of those things.