In 1871, eleven years after moving to 135 Fleet Street where it was to remain for the next 127 years, The Daily Telegraph teamed with the New York Herald to send Henry Morton Stanley to darkest Africa to find David Livingstone. That November, it quoted Stanley's immortal words: "Dr Livingstone, I presume" in his dispatch which was carried to England first by jungle messengers, then in canoes and, eventually, by morse code tapped by radio. It is difficult, now, to realize that global newspaper communications Were not much better 82 years later in 1953, when news of the conquest of the Everest took three days to reach London.

One of The Daily Telegraph's great strengths has always been its extensive foreign news coverage. Even by 1857 it was well established as a newspaper with a global view. It had a bureau in Paris and carried regular weekly dispatches" from America and Canada. It also printed what was called "an occasional semi-news feature" entitled curiously but graphically -- "Steam Intercourse with Australia" and boasted that it was "the largest and best newspaper in the world, compiled with care for a readership from artisan to peer".

But even in the Antarctic in 1958, when I covered the meeting between Hillary and Sir Vivian Fuchs at the South Pole, getting the news to the foreign desk was equally primitive by today's standards. My stories were still tapped out in morse, sent by often unreliable radio to New Zealand, then resent by cable to London.

Forty four years later, when Sir Edmund Hillary's son Peter climbed the Everest for the second time in 2002 he called his father by cell phone from the summit, they chatted for about 20 minutes - and, naturally, nobody thought that particularly remarkable, so great has been the transformation in communications.

So how did the news of the 1953 Everest triumph reach London?

Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit late In the morning of May 29 and spent about 10 minutes taking photographs - which, of course, remained on the roll in their camera -- before slowly descending, exhausted, to their tiny assault camp on the South Col. The following day they clambered down to the Western Cwm (still about 25,000 feet up) and were met by George Lowe, a fellow New Zealander -- to whom Hillary shouted out the first news of the conquest: "Well, we knocked the bastard off", a comment kept from the public until Lowe wrote his autobiography.

James Morris, now much better known as Jan Morris, the prolific travel writer, but then a young, slim and fresh faced reporter from The Times which had sponsored the Everest Expedition, met the party as they moved down to Camp Six and excitedly cross questioned Hillary and Tenzing.

"It was James who realized the importance of the climb in relation to the Coronation," Hillary told me later. "He grilled us, then accompanied by a Sherpa made a hasty descent down the icefall to Namche Bazar [about 18 miles away] where there was an Indian Army radio and sent a message to the British Ambassador in Kathmandu."

Morris's brief first message and his subsequent longer dispatch were in code, which the Ambassador could read, and he relayed both messages by diplomatic radio to London where they reached the Foreign Office around midday on June 1.

It was up to The Times to decide whether to hang on to the story for themselves or give it to everyone. Sensibly, they decided - or were persuaded, I don't know -- to share the news for the biggest possible impact so the next day, Coronation Day, all the newspapers had it. The pictures they took still had to be taken down to civilization, developed and did not reach London until the following week.

Five years later, at the South Pole, 9,200 feet up in the centre of Antarctica, the anticipated meeting of Fuchs and Hillary was developing into its own Stanley meets Livingstone epic. Half a dozen British, New Zealand and American reporters who had been flown to the South Pole base from McMurdo Sound by the United States Navy had spent the previous night in a large canvas tent erected near the partially underground base as emergency shelter, in case of fire. The Navy radio operators agreed to send our stories, kept to a maximum of 250 words in 50-word "takes", and we reporters drew lots for priority. In the event, getting the story out turned into a marathon with us hammering at our portables in the tent, running 60 yards across the snow to the radio shack, and then back to turn out the next piece.

Fifty years on, I feel I can now reveal without repercussions that I had smuggled a bottle of whisky to the notoriously "dry" navy base and had spent the previous evening negotiating with the radio operators to have them develop a black and white photo I intended taking of the meeting. They agreed to send one picture back to London by what was known as a radio photo, relaying it on from Balboa because of the distance.

Regarded then as the cutting edge of communications, a photograph was attached to a rotating drum, scanned by a narrow light beam, and broadcast as a radio signal. It was picked up at the other end on developing paper rotating at the same speed. The result, which took five hours to reach London, was streaked by radio interference but regarded as a sensational achievement. Demanding news editors, these days, would expect colour pictures back in London within minutes, via digital camera, laptop and satellite telephone - and probably complain if they thought the colours were weak!

It is all a far cry from the days when departing adventurers were farewelled as their ships left dock and perhaps never heard of again - even when Stanley went off in search of Livingstone.

Communications techniques were often a menace in themselves. When Queen Salote of Tonga died in Auckland just before Christmas, 1969, I flew back to Tonga with the new king, Tupou Tofa'ahau in an RNZAF Hercules where he was to make preparations for the funeral. Cable & Wireless operated from a tin shed on the beach at Nuku'alofa where my first story was again tapped out in morse, using punctuation abbreviations which, when reconstituted in London by a subeditor with little South Pacific knowledge, appeared in the Telegraph's first edition with the words Nukuaphostrophealofa and Tofaaphostropheahau scattered throughout! I was told later that the Editor nearly blew a fuse and my piece was cleaned up for subsequent editions.

Also read "When Everest fell", FCA Board member, Neena Bhandari's, recent interview with Sir Edmund Hillary on 50 years of climbing the Everest