Olympics 2012: From birds to broadband

Network solutions company AcmePacket collected a bunch of interesting Olympic communication stats from around the Web and created an infographic called “London Calling: Mobility & the Olympic Games.” The graphic traces the evolution of how competition results were transmitted to sports fans far and wide.

Beginning with the 776 B.C .games, and lasting until 384 A.D., when Roman Emperor Theodosius I banned the Olympics in a bid to enforce Christianity as a state religion, homing pigeons were the primary form of disseminating information. As centuries of Olympic radio silence passed, pigeons gave way to more technologically advanced methods, and by 1896, when the competition was revived by the newly formed International Olympic Committee, telegraphs replaced fowl as the messengers of choice. In 1924, the Olympics were broadcast over the radio for the first time, and in 1936, a live telecast was shown to viewers in Berlin and Potsdam, Germany. By 1960, the Games were being broadcast on television worldwide; 36 years later, in 1996, Atlanta hosted the first “Internet Olympics,” marked by the competition’s very own Web page. Today, a mere 16 years later, we have the 24/7 Olympic Athletes Hub, dozens of smartphone apps that track everything from the progress of the Olympic torch to the location of toilets in the host city, and the London Eye alight with a rainbow of colors that correspond to Twitter sentiment about the Games.