ledged to do this in a timely fashion. The Pony Express bore this challenge very successfully; in a period of ten days, it would relay mail between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California. When compared with the regular three-week transport time for mail that was traversing the United States, the Pony Express operated at lightning speed (Dicerto 3). The rapid speed of Pony Express mail delivery was very important in 1860: 1860 was a year marked by the brink of civil war; a year during which efficient cross-country communications was a necessity (Pony Express).Bearing this background information in mind, we can discuss the first layer of OSI functionality and its manifestation in the Pony Express system. This top layer of the OSI reference model is called the Application Layer. The Application Layer requires that a communications system include a device or method that will create a message; this message is that which one wishes to communicate to another. Furthermore, this message must be of a specific type; in computing, this message may be a word-processed document, a sound file, or a graphics file, to name a few examples (Stamper 28).In the Pony Express system of communication, Application Layer protocols state that messages were to be printed matter (Dicerto 6). Material that was acceptable for Pony Express delivery included urgent messages and news-breaking events. Such communications were prevalent during 1860-1861. Furthermore, these matters needed to be communicated to the Western United States in a high-speed manner, due to the great internal conflict that was dividing the United States (Dicerto 7). Examples of Pony Express-acceptable communications include the news of President Lincolns election, and the news of the outbreak of the Civil War. Both of these items were communicated to the Western US by means of the Pony Express (Pony Express).The next layer of the OSI Model is called the Presentation Layer (Fortino and Vi...
