Howard Staunton
The first chess match by electric telegraph took place in 1844, between Washington and Baltimore. In April 1845 Staunton and Captain Kennedy travelled to Gosport to play two games by telegraph against a group in London. Staunton took a long-term interest in this solution to the difficulties of travel, and reported telegraph games in the Illustrated London News. In 1871 his report of a telegraphic match between Sydney and Adelaide calculated that the 74 moves of the longest game had traveled a total of 220,000 miles (not much less than the distance between Earth and Moon).