The first transatlantic telegraph cable was a bold, beautiful failure (2019)

Posted by sparsesignal 5 days ago

Comments

Comment by slg 2 days ago

I highly recommend Jon Bois' Youtube docuseries[1] on this story that's basically a 4-hour PowerPoint presentation which frames this all through the metaphor of the 90s Tim Allen sitcom Home Improvement. That descriptor probably sounds insane to anyone not familiar with his work, but Bois is one of a kind with what he does and I thought this series was one of his best.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmyBSrQodnI

Comment by rufo 2 days ago

Seconded. I went in with only a vague awareness of what Bois' thing is and knowing it somehow involved Tims, Als, and oceanic telegraph cables. I was not disappointed.

Comment by c0_0p_ 2 days ago

There is a hard to find book called "Tent life in Siberia" by George Kennan, which is his account of a scouting trip of a bunch of Americans trying to build an overland telegraph route to Europe via Canada, Alaska then Russia, because it's proven too difficult to go under the Pacific. It's quite an entertaining read if you're into that kind of thing. It's not the most professional operation and after two years they get word that the Pacific undersea line has succeeded.

Comment by MengerSponge 2 days ago

It may be hard to find in print, but it's not hard to find! https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12328

Comment by sparsesignal 2 days ago

Posted this because I saw a piece of the cable at the Science Museum in London years ago. It looks like it's still on display in the Information Age gallery:

https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co33448...

Comment by jefflinwood 2 days ago

I just finished reading this book, which came out this year.

Lightning Beneath the Sea: The Race to Wire the World and the Dawn of the Information Age by James M. Tabor (Author)

About this telegraph cable, and all of the different attempts to lay it on the sea floor.

I also recommend The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage (1998) if you want to learn more about telegraphs.

Comment by tdeck 2 days ago

It's very dense, but if you enjoy going down a rabbit hole about this stuff I recommend The Story of Telecommunications by George Oslin. It's the size of a history textbook.

Comment by userbinator 2 days ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_telegraph_cable#...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable...

Thomson (Kelvin) was right, and Whitehouse was wrong. It's seriously disappointing how the IEEE of all groups is now trying to spin this differently.

Comment by Animats 2 days ago

Once it was working, operation was like this: [1] The siphon recorder produced a squiggly line, which could be read as a code similar to Morse code. Not clicks, though. The cable had so much inductance that the data rate was very limited.

[1] https://atlantic-cable.com/Article/1895HazelHill/index.htm

Comment by toplinesoftsys 22 hours ago

This is a very familiar pattern: brilliant visionary bring new technology too early and it fails. The next guy does not need to be such a prodigy - he just need to be right on time to succeed.

Comment by pcardoso 2 days ago

Arthur C. Clarke wrote a non-fiction book about this, I think it is called Voice Across the Sea. I read it many years ago and found it very good.

Comment by thenthenthen 2 days ago

If you ever had a root canal treatment, you might have some of the same building materials in your mouth as the cable (Gutta Percha)!

Comment by handle584 2 days ago

For more mathematics/physics behind it, Körner's classic Fourier Analysis [0] contains a few interesting chapters.

[0]: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/fourier-analysis/5FD8F0...

Comment by Rebelgecko 2 days ago

Mother Earth Mother Board

Comment by MengerSponge 2 days ago

https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/

I'm very jealous of everyone who gets to read this for the first time this weekend.

Comment by elteto 2 days ago

I highly recommend reading A Thread Across the Ocean, a gripping tale of the development and laying of the first transatlantic cable. It’s quite a page turner.

Comment by walrus01 2 days ago

History of submarine telegraph:

https://atlantic-cable.com/

Comment by gorfian_robot 2 days ago

recent 99pi episode:

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/672-transatlantic-fib...