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The British empire's resilient subsea telegraph network

subseacables.blogspot.com

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Re: The British empire's resilient subsea telegraph network

#41

Post by tor825gl »

retrac wrote: post #25
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #6

An interesting book on the subject of telegraph networks is The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage [1]. As well as the technical and commercial drivers, it also describes how the telegraph forced people to confront concepts like simultaneity, information being distinct from its physical medium, privacy, early approaches to encryption, etc. A fascinating book. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Victorian_Internet

The GBP/USD currency pair is still known just as "the cable". Aside from all its other uses: the telegraph gave a way to synchronize clocks. And accurate time is accurate measurement of distance. > [...] The latest determination in 1892 is due to the cooperation of the McGill College Observatory at Montreal, Canada, with the Greenwich Observatory. [...] The final value for the longitude of the Harvard Observatory at…

One of the major uses for the telegraph was the first funds transfers that could happen quicker than moving paper (or bullion) from one location to another. London banks would telegraph correspondent banks in India, Australia, etc.

This essentially doubled the capital intensity of international trade since the goods had to move in one direction but the money could be sent instantaneously in the other.

Re: The British empire's resilient subsea telegraph network

#42

Post by thomasbibby »

kitd wrote: post #23
jphoward wrote: post #2

Here is some more information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Red_Line And one of the old cable huts still exists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Cable_Station

My wife and I were visiting County Kerry in SW Ireland last summer. We were on Valentia Island and quite by chance walked past the telegraph building where the first transatlantic cable came ashore. Only marked by a (very interesting) plaque describing its significance.

There is also a small museum at the site, worth a look if you visit again! https://valentiaisland.ie/cable-station/

Re: The British empire's resilient subsea telegraph network

#44

Post by seany »

pchristensen wrote: post #14

I always have to recommend Mother Earth, Mother Board by Neal Stephenson[1] if the thought of undersea cables sounds at all interesting. I'll also second andyjohnson0's recommendation of The Victorian Internet[2] - it blew my mind how much of modern digital culture existed on telegraphs prior to voice. [1] https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46433901

https://archive.is/rs7Vq

Re: The British empire's resilient subsea telegraph network

#45

Post by foxglacier »

girishso wrote: post #43

Imagine people in 1890s or so, hearing about this almost instant transfer of messages, news to any part of the world - would be nothing short of magical modern technology.

If they had a positive outlook on technological development, yea. But that's cultural and perhaps didn't get into full swing until the mid 1900s and has now waned. Look at today how many pessimists hate LLMs despite them being even more magical modern technology.

Re: The British empire's resilient subsea telegraph network

#46

Post by thenthenthen »

KineticLensman wrote: post #30

It was strategically important in WW1 because the British could communicate with the colonies with very chance little chance of messages being intercepted. The Germans, in contrast, didn't have access to their own transatlantic channels and had to use plain-text messages on cables that the UK/US controlled (US operators disallowed coded comms).

This forced Germans to build some of their own cables, super interesting history: https://blogs.mhs.ox.ac.uk/innovatingincombat/yap-island-ger...

Re: The British empire's resilient subsea telegraph network

#47

Post by fastball »

zoeysmithe wrote: post #37
ninalanyon wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in the UK the fact that the Victorians and others used a lot of child labour is well and widely known. Blake wrote the poem The Chimney Sweeper about boys sold into the trade long before the 1850s and Elizabeth Barrett Browning published The Cry of the Children in Blackwood's magazine in 1843. Charles Kingsley used his The Water Babies to question child labour and England's treatment of the poor in general i…

I imagine the percent of people who know these telegram cables were made by children is a very low percentage.

What difference does 10 years make when you are working in a shitty factory for peanuts?

Re: The British empire's resilient subsea telegraph network

#48

Post by jillesvangurp »

Aromasin wrote: post #10
alexfoo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Blew my mind that there was a wire that went all the way to London from Australia! Before the telegraph they used to do things wirelessly: https://www.brunningandprice.co.uk/_downloads/telegraph/tele... (Not quite London to Australia though...) In the late-1700s/early-1800s the Admiralty Telegraph was used to relay messages between London and Portsmouth (70 odd miles apart) using a semaphore type system with repeat…

To think it was done even 1000s of years prior to that with just smoke and fire! Granted, the ability to communicate through the rain would be a necessity for the British.

My home country the Netherlands became a republic after a long war with the Spanish that controlled the territory from Spain after having inherited it via various wars and conflicts that divided up the remains of the Carolian empires. The Austrians ended up with a lot of states across what is now Germany and Belgium. France emerged as well as a country.

The Netherlands was too far away from the courts in Spain for them to govern effectively. Travel time was measured in weeks. So, remote regions like that necessarily had a large degree of autonomy. That became the basis for power to centralize around Amsterdam as it was favorably located for for trading. There were a lot of grievances with religious issues (Catholicism vs. Protestantism), taxation, etc. But the Spanish failure to project power from a distance had everything to do with the centralized nature of their empire and long communication channels.

In the so called golden century (17th century), the Netherlands got filthy rich on global trade and expansion. Information and knowledge flowed to and from Amsterdam from all over the world.

The Dutch naval forces dominated the North Sea for quite some time and it's only later that the British emerged as the better/bigger empire. Navies and ships were the fastest way to move information around at the time. Until the British finally upgraded to cables and telegrams which enabled them to have colonies on all continents. They really nailed command and control across their empire for a while.

The Romans had their roads to move armies and information. Shipping and navigation technology leveled that up from the 1400s or so. These days, low latency communication is a commodity of course.

Re: The British empire's resilient subsea telegraph network

#49

Post by testdelacc1 »

fastball wrote: post #47
zoeysmithe wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine the percent of people who know these telegram cables were made by children is a very low percentage.

What difference does 10 years make when you are working in a shitty factory for peanuts?

Is this a serious question? Then here’s a serious answer - the difference between employing a 9 year old and a 19 year old for a dangerous job is All the difference in the world.

Re: The British empire's resilient subsea telegraph network

#50

Post by Peteragain »

neillyons wrote: post #3

When visiting Ayers Rock in Australia I stayed in Alice Springs. While I was there I learnt that Alice Springs exists because it was a repeater station for a telegraph line that stretched from Southern Australia all the way to London. There would be people listening to morse code, and tapping it out again to the next repeater station. Blew my mind that there was a wire that went all the way to London from Australia!

My great, great grand dad carted telegraph poles for the construction of the southern half of that! Family oral history.
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