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Message in its most general meaning is an object of Communication . Depending on the context, the term may apply to both the Information contents and its actual presentation.

In the Communications discipline, a message is Information which is sent from a Source to a receiver. Some common definitions include:


In the Actor Model a Message is similarly an Actor itself that is sent asynchronously from one Actor to another.

In languages such as Smalltalk -80 and Objective-C an instance of a class method is called (confusingly) a Message .

See also: Instant Messaging , Message Oriented Middleware


HISTORY OF MESSAGING

  • Smoke Signals - Ancient (short distance only)

  • Wind-power Shipping (hence the name) "In 1800, it took 2 years to send a message from London to Calcutta. You wrote a physical letter and entrusted it to a wind-powered ship that sailed down the western coasts of Europe and Africa, around the Cape of Good Hope, back up the eastern coast of Africa, across the Arabian Sea, etc. -- with, presumably, stops in just about every port (yes, they had multi-hop message transports back then)." {Link without Title}

  • Semaphore - Limited use

  • Telegraph - (late 19th Century )

  • Telephone - (late 19th Century -early 20th Century )

  • Steamshipping "By 1914, it took 1 month to send a message from London to Calcutta. The Suez Canal had opened, and steamships powered their way through the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, and thence to India. Big improvement." {Link without Title}

  • Radio , (early 20th Century )

  • Television - (mid 20th Century )

  • Airmail (1950s or 1960s?) ~ 1 week.

  • Overnight Mail - became popular and affordable in the 1980s, made the international messaging only two days.

  • Text Messaging - (1990s) Messages sent through cellular phones.

  • Electronic Mail (~1994) - delivery times of 10 minutes, based on number of hops, frequency of manual retrieval, etc.

  • Instant Messaging - Message travels at average 100 milliseconds, almost always less than a second. Often shorted to "IM", sometimes in combination with the type of messenger (YIM is yahoo instant messenger). People enjoy messaging others through many types of mail including: regular mail, e-mail, online messaging services



REFERENCES

# "Brief history" section adapted from Peter Saint-Andre "The Need For Speed"
#'' Department Of Defense Dictionary Of Military And Associated Terms ''
#'' Federal Standard 1037C ''