7 ms·

Datacenter Locations Driven by 19th Century Politics

157 points by tellarin 7y ago

C1sc0cat 7y ago
Interesting , one of the reasons GCHQ moved to Bletchley Park in WW2 was it was very conveniently placed in terms of the GPO network at the time.
- unixhero 7y ago
  Pardon my ignorance, but what was the GPO network?
  - pm215 7y ago
    The GPO was the General Post Office (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Post_Office https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Post_Office) which by the 1940s dealt not only with snailmail but also telegraph and telephones. GPO engineers built the Colossus computer at Bletchley.
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    The General Post Office phone and telegraph network. Formed in 1660 as a government department to provide postal services - by Charles II, the one who got rudely interrupted by Cromwell's republic. Took on telegraph, telephone and radio transmission as they were developed. As a government department until the 50s or 60s when they became a state owned company, they always had a distinctly "comfortable" relationship with the intelligence services right back to their inception. Opening post, intercept stations at cable landfalls, etc. Phone and post have since been privatised. Tommy Flowers, creator of Colossus, worked at GPO Research Station Dollis Hill. Pre-war in the 30s he'd been working to create all electronic phone exchanges.
    - gumby 7y ago
      BTW it was Charles I who lost his head thanks to Cromwell — Charles II was the restored monarch. Interesting that the post office was important enough to be chartered almost right away after he assumed office, despite all the other things going on at that point.
      - jessaustin 7y ago
        Perhaps the younger Chuck felt incentivized, somehow, to provide services of actual value to British subjects?
        twic 7y ago
        Or to have a more efficient way to spy on their correspondence.
      - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
        Of course it was, and I knew that, or at least used to. Not quite sure what brain was thinking. :) Royal Mail goes back to Henry VIII or Elizabeth's time, perhaps further, but it was royal mail only then, not for the mere public yet. I think that might have come before the Civil War, and before post offices. Don't know what happened to Royal Mail during Cromwell's time. Given the start date of the GPO, post might simply be one of the many things that had legislation between Civil War and restoration. All those were thrown out and re-legislated or forgotten.
        gumby 7y ago
        Yeah, I got the feeling it was a brain fart, so I hope starting with "BTW" made it come off as a friendly note. I know, I know, this is the internet so I should have coughed up a bolus of lava, skewering your entire claim based on a trivial misstatement, and claiming that your motivation was to support that political party I detest.. I apologise for letting society down.
barking 7y ago
I feel like all these discussions should make some mention of how the US government felt this was their land to give
- Aloha 7y ago
  I mean, it legally was. The fact that we effectively stole it from the natives, is immaterial to that.
  - homonculus1 7y ago
    *conquered
    - CydeWeys 7y ago
      No, a lot of it was just outright treaties and contracts that were then later ignored. And there is/was legal theories of war, which weren't applied to the "savages" back then.
    - inscionent 7y ago
      Murder, Forced Labor, Indefinite imprisonment. It was what it was. We can become a better society but not if we turn a blind eye to where we came from.
- mieseratte 7y ago
  > I feel like all these discussions should make some mention of how the US government felt this was their land to give I feel the opposite. It distracts from the topic at-hand.
blue_devil 7y ago
>> This same river water is now used for the adiabatic cooling of the modern datacenters along this route. This sounds like a major climate change related vulnerability.
- blue_devil 7y ago
  What triggers people on this comment? Water is a scarce resource, about to get scarcer at that latitude; data centres need cooling; ergo, vulnerability.
gumby 7y ago
Prior example is what is now the SPRINT phone company, started as the Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Network Telecommunications, which someone at the SP had the bright idea to monetize after the telephone long distance monopoly was broken up.
- MS90 7y ago
  What do you think came first, the name or the acronym?
  - gumby 7y ago
    Like GNU, why shouldn't it be deliberate creation of an acronym that spelled a word? Or if I'm misunderstanding your question: the network already existed due to that name because they already had all the right of way for the same reason UP did. IIRC (it was a while ago) MCI came first and some VP at the SP was inspired by that to try to provide external service over their existing resource. After all they were in the transport business with a big infrastructure setup, so transporting bits was pretty natural.
mxuribe 7y ago
This was such an interesting article! The only nitpick item I'd mention: isn't kind of crappy that the U.S. gov. gave the Union Pacific railroad pretty much a monopoly of that 200-foot right of way piece of land? I mean, i could understand if the railroad used it for their own uses, which from a functional perspective, i understand and agree...But for this railroad to turn around and authorize others - and I'm sure they charge everyone for this! - to then use that land, just seems sort of unfair. I understand that it's "convenient" for other entities to only work with that single entity; but that still seems a monopoly to me. So, forevermore, the Union Pacific railroad will get money for use of this land, that they were given so many years ago; well, that sucks.
- dnautics 7y ago
  by contrast, the great northern railroad was built without land grants.
  - Aloha 7y ago
    yes, by that time private capital was interested in funding a rail line, this however was the first one
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  It was the reward for building the railroad in the first place.
  - mxuribe 7y ago
    I guess I sort of assumed that the revenue the railroad would receive from trains traversing its rails would be sufficient income, and wouldn't need any additional land. I mean, these railroads do have a captive customer base, since their customers can't just "choose" another railroad provider. (Hmm, this is beginning to sound like our cable-centric ISPs.) So, is all this (that is, the historically crazy high revenues that railroad companies have brought in) where the term "robber barons" comes from?
    - 7y ago
zwerdlds 7y ago
See also: The relationship from horse to space shuttle. http://www.astrodigital.org/space/stshorse.html http://www.astrodigital.org/space/stshorse.html
- shezi 7y ago
  Please note that, while amusing, this is mostly false. Especially the space shuttle part of the story: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/railroad-gauge-chariots/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/railroad-gauge-chariots/
  - zwerdlds 7y ago
    Interesting. The article says the standard is 4' 8", and the South mostly used 5' 6". 8" variation seems like not that much when you're dealing with something as imprecise as a wagon wheel. I don't know though. Thanks for the link.
alexhutcheson 7y ago
> In 1859 the US Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis, strongly favored the southerly railroad route from New Orleans to San Diego: it was shorter, had no major mountains to traverse, and had lower operational costs due to lack of snowfall to clear from the tracks. However, in the 1850s no Congressman from a northern state would have voted for a southerly railroad route to aid the Confederacy's slave-based economy, and no Congressman from the south would have voted for a northerly route. I feel like this overlooks the other main reason to prefer a northern route - the north was where most of the people and industry were. The midwest and northeast were much denser than the southeast, and it was important for railroads to serve industrial hubs like St. Louis and Chicago, which had onward connections to the northeast. A San Diego-New Orleans Route is "shorter" only if you overlook the extra 850+ miles to get from New Orleans to Chicago, plus the additional travel within California (probably by ship). There are good reasons to prefer the northern alignment that was chosen, and Jefferson Davis' motivation was just as political as the northern Congressmen who opposed the southern alignment.

157 points by tellarin 7y ago

Interesting , one of the reasons GCHQ moved to Bletchley Park in WW2 was it was very conveniently placed in terms of the GPO network at the time.

unixhero 7y ago
Pardon my ignorance, but what was the GPO network?
- pm215 7y ago
  The GPO was the General Post Office (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Post_Office https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Post_Office) which by the 1940s dealt not only with snailmail but also telegraph and telephones. GPO engineers built the Colossus computer at Bletchley.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  The General Post Office phone and telegraph network. Formed in 1660 as a government department to provide postal services - by Charles II, the one who got rudely interrupted by Cromwell's republic. Took on telegraph, telephone and radio transmission as they were developed. As a government department until the 50s or 60s when they became a state owned company, they always had a distinctly "comfortable" relationship with the intelligence services right back to their inception. Opening post, intercept stations at cable landfalls, etc. Phone and post have since been privatised. Tommy Flowers, creator of Colossus, worked at GPO Research Station Dollis Hill. Pre-war in the 30s he'd been working to create all electronic phone exchanges.
  - gumby 7y ago
    BTW it was Charles I who lost his head thanks to Cromwell — Charles II was the restored monarch. Interesting that the post office was important enough to be chartered almost right away after he assumed office, despite all the other things going on at that point.
    - jessaustin 7y ago
      Perhaps the younger Chuck felt incentivized, somehow, to provide services of actual value to British subjects?
      - twic 7y ago
        Or to have a more efficient way to spy on their correspondence.
    - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
      Of course it was, and I knew that, or at least used to. Not quite sure what brain was thinking. :) Royal Mail goes back to Henry VIII or Elizabeth's time, perhaps further, but it was royal mail only then, not for the mere public yet. I think that might have come before the Civil War, and before post offices. Don't know what happened to Royal Mail during Cromwell's time. Given the start date of the GPO, post might simply be one of the many things that had legislation between Civil War and restoration. All those were thrown out and re-legislated or forgotten.
      - gumby 7y ago
        Yeah, I got the feeling it was a brain fart, so I hope starting with "BTW" made it come off as a friendly note. I know, I know, this is the internet so I should have coughed up a bolus of lava, skewering your entire claim based on a trivial misstatement, and claiming that your motivation was to support that political party I detest.. I apologise for letting society down.

barking 7y ago

I feel like all these discussions should make some mention of how the US government felt this was their land to give

Aloha 7y ago
I mean, it legally was. The fact that we effectively stole it from the natives, is immaterial to that.
- homonculus1 7y ago
  *conquered
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    No, a lot of it was just outright treaties and contracts that were then later ignored. And there is/was legal theories of war, which weren't applied to the "savages" back then.
  - inscionent 7y ago
    Murder, Forced Labor, Indefinite imprisonment. It was what it was. We can become a better society but not if we turn a blind eye to where we came from.
mieseratte 7y ago
> I feel like all these discussions should make some mention of how the US government felt this was their land to give I feel the opposite. It distracts from the topic at-hand.

blue_devil 7y ago

>> This same river water is now used for the adiabatic cooling of the modern datacenters along this route. This sounds like a major climate change related vulnerability.

blue_devil 7y ago
What triggers people on this comment? Water is a scarce resource, about to get scarcer at that latitude; data centres need cooling; ergo, vulnerability.

gumby 7y ago

Prior example is what is now the SPRINT phone company, started as the Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Network Telecommunications, which someone at the SP had the bright idea to monetize after the telephone long distance monopoly was broken up.

MS90 7y ago
What do you think came first, the name or the acronym?
- gumby 7y ago
  Like GNU, why shouldn't it be deliberate creation of an acronym that spelled a word? Or if I'm misunderstanding your question: the network already existed due to that name because they already had all the right of way for the same reason UP did. IIRC (it was a while ago) MCI came first and some VP at the SP was inspired by that to try to provide external service over their existing resource. After all they were in the transport business with a big infrastructure setup, so transporting bits was pretty natural.

mxuribe 7y ago

This was such an interesting article! The only nitpick item I'd mention: isn't kind of crappy that the U.S. gov. gave the Union Pacific railroad pretty much a monopoly of that 200-foot right of way piece of land? I mean, i could understand if the railroad used it for their own uses, which from a functional perspective, i understand and agree...But for this railroad to turn around and authorize others - and I'm sure they charge everyone for this! - to then use that land, just seems sort of unfair. I understand that it's "convenient" for other entities to only work with that single entity; but that still seems a monopoly to me. So, forevermore, the Union Pacific railroad will get money for use of this land, that they were given so many years ago; well, that sucks.

dnautics 7y ago
by contrast, the great northern railroad was built without land grants.
- Aloha 7y ago
  yes, by that time private capital was interested in funding a rail line, this however was the first one
CydeWeys 7y ago
It was the reward for building the railroad in the first place.
- mxuribe 7y ago
  I guess I sort of assumed that the revenue the railroad would receive from trains traversing its rails would be sufficient income, and wouldn't need any additional land. I mean, these railroads do have a captive customer base, since their customers can't just "choose" another railroad provider. (Hmm, this is beginning to sound like our cable-centric ISPs.) So, is all this (that is, the historically crazy high revenues that railroad companies have brought in) where the term "robber barons" comes from?
  - 7y ago

zwerdlds 7y ago

See also: The relationship from horse to space shuttle. http://www.astrodigital.org/space/stshorse.html http://www.astrodigital.org/space/stshorse.html

shezi 7y ago
Please note that, while amusing, this is mostly false. Especially the space shuttle part of the story: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/railroad-gauge-chariots/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/railroad-gauge-chariots/
- zwerdlds 7y ago
  Interesting. The article says the standard is 4' 8", and the South mostly used 5' 6". 8" variation seems like not that much when you're dealing with something as imprecise as a wagon wheel. I don't know though. Thanks for the link.

alexhutcheson 7y ago

> In 1859 the US Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis, strongly favored the southerly railroad route from New Orleans to San Diego: it was shorter, had no major mountains to traverse, and had lower operational costs due to lack of snowfall to clear from the tracks. However, in the 1850s no Congressman from a northern state would have voted for a southerly railroad route to aid the Confederacy's slave-based economy, and no Congressman from the south would have voted for a northerly route. I feel like this overlooks the other main reason to prefer a northern route - the north was where most of the people and industry were. The midwest and northeast were much denser than the southeast, and it was important for railroads to serve industrial hubs like St. Louis and Chicago, which had onward connections to the northeast. A San Diego-New Orleans Route is "shorter" only if you overlook the extra 850+ miles to get from New Orleans to Chicago, plus the additional travel within California (probably by ship). There are good reasons to prefer the northern alignment that was chosen, and Jefferson Davis' motivation was just as political as the northern Congressmen who opposed the southern alignment.