4 ms·
As another example of historical complexity driven by a focus on directly encoding the everyday representation of data, early designs for the telegraph system u
by somebodynew 5y ago
As another example of historical complexity driven by a focus on directly encoding the everyday representation of data, early designs for the telegraph system used twenty-six individual wires to separately indicate each letter of the alphabet.
It is also interesting that practical designs then ignored the obvious five-wire simplification of this ("UTF-32 for telegraphy") and settled on Morse code ("UTF-8 for telegraphy").
- djmips 5y agoThe costs of stringing wire would be significantly less for the Morse system. There were low wire designs that could be used by untrained staff. The Cooke and Wheatstone system was used in 4 to 6 wire setups. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooke_and_Wheatstone_telegraph https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooke_and_Wheatstone_telegra...