5 ms·

If you find this at all interesting, you have to read Neal Stephenson's classic Wired article about undersea cables - https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/ htt

If you find this at all interesting, you have to read Neal Stephenson's classic Wired article about undersea cables - https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/ https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/

irrational 5y ago
Thanks for posting this. What a fascinating read. > one early inventor wanted to use 26-wire cables, one wire for each letter of the alphabet. I’d love to know how he thought that would work. How did he plan on knowing the order of the letters? What about spaces and other punctuation?
- WJW 5y ago
  The way I'd do it would be to have a big 26-light display, each corresponding to one letter. Then you'd light them up one at a time and have the receiving clerk write down the letters one by one. Efficient? Not very, but I can see how someone without a lot of information theory knowledge (as almost all early inventors would be) would land on that idea first.
  - 1-more 5y ago
    if you squint and kind of wave your hands that's how parallel ports worked, just faster and done by a computer.
  - danrocks 5y ago
    I wonder what the plan was for writing in Chinese...
- tdeck 5y ago
  There were pre-Morse / Wheatstone telegraph experiments using 26 wires. One notable early system by Salva Campillo used 26+ tubes of electrolyte, one for each letter. Closing the circuit would cause bubbles to form in the tube at the other end. Even wackier systems from before this time used static electricity ("current" electricity was harder to generate in the early days). One proposal was to have a different servant hold a wire for each letter of the alphabet. At the other end a high-voltage Leyden jar would be connected to wires in turn, giving the servant a shock and prompting them to speak their assigned letter. Unfortunately I can't find the source for this one right now (I think it was in the book The Story of Telecommunications).
rednerrus 5y ago
Time to reread Cryptonomicon.
jeffrallen 5y ago
Came here to post that, great minds think alike!
- zeeb 5y ago
  Ditto; great article.
divbzero 5y ago
The article can also be found in Some Remarks [1], a collection of his essays and short fiction. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Some_Remarks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Some_Remarks

If you find this at all interesting, you have to read Neal Stephenson's classic Wired article about undersea cables - https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/ https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/

irrational 5y ago

Thanks for posting this. What a fascinating read. > one early inventor wanted to use 26-wire cables, one wire for each letter of the alphabet. I’d love to know how he thought that would work. How did he plan on knowing the order of the letters? What about spaces and other punctuation?

WJW 5y ago
The way I'd do it would be to have a big 26-light display, each corresponding to one letter. Then you'd light them up one at a time and have the receiving clerk write down the letters one by one. Efficient? Not very, but I can see how someone without a lot of information theory knowledge (as almost all early inventors would be) would land on that idea first.
- 1-more 5y ago
  if you squint and kind of wave your hands that's how parallel ports worked, just faster and done by a computer.
- danrocks 5y ago
  I wonder what the plan was for writing in Chinese...
tdeck 5y ago
There were pre-Morse / Wheatstone telegraph experiments using 26 wires. One notable early system by Salva Campillo used 26+ tubes of electrolyte, one for each letter. Closing the circuit would cause bubbles to form in the tube at the other end. Even wackier systems from before this time used static electricity ("current" electricity was harder to generate in the early days). One proposal was to have a different servant hold a wire for each letter of the alphabet. At the other end a high-voltage Leyden jar would be connected to wires in turn, giving the servant a shock and prompting them to speak their assigned letter. Unfortunately I can't find the source for this one right now (I think it was in the book The Story of Telecommunications).

rednerrus 5y ago

Time to reread Cryptonomicon.

jeffrallen 5y ago

Came here to post that, great minds think alike!

zeeb 5y ago
Ditto; great article.

divbzero 5y ago

The article can also be found in Some Remarks [1], a collection of his essays and short fiction. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Some_Remarks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Some_Remarks