
Early telegraph routes were strikingly similar to today’s Internet pathways - benbreen
http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/places/charlie-mccann/proto-internet
======
jfoutz
Over and over i have to relearn archaic does not mean stupid. If you want to
build a stone cathedral today, you're not going to get more arch height than
the medieval state of the art. If you want to lay a cable, it's going to go
pretty much in the same spot as telegraph cables, because people solved that
problem 150 years ago.

People have been cunning and brilliant forever, they just had sucky tools.

~~~
digi_owl
And made up for it by throwing man-hours at it.

------
djcapelis
Of course?

Where else would you route them? Did they expect that previous undersea cables
would squiggle around for thousands of miles undersea the fun of it? Or
connect desert to desert instead of population center to population center?

Also, there are _huge_ changes in comparison to modern undersea lines. The
majority of connectivity on the Pacific rim, a huge factor in the modern
Internet, and all the Pacific undersea cables are all absent from the
historical map. If we talk about the big land cables, you'd see a lot of
changes there too, some of which actually have to do with geopolitical
changes! This only discusses underseas cables with an Atlantic focused view,
which is all pretty similar.

~~~
hamiltonkibbe
This was my reaction too.

"Early dirt roads followed strikingly similar paths to today's paved
highways..."

------
jamesbowman
For a first hand account of the telegraph revolution, I enjoyed reading this
state-of-the-art report from 1860:

[https://archive.org/details/historytheorypra00presrich](https://archive.org/details/historytheorypra00presrich)

------
jlarocco
I don't see why this would be surprising. Politics and geography haven't
changed that much in the last 150 years. The telegraph cables linked up the
technically advanced population centers, and fiber optic cables do the same
thing now. The technically advanced population centers are more or less the
same now as they were then, so it makes sense the maps are similar.

~~~
jandrese
Exactly. My thought when I read the headline was "Well, the cities haven't
moved have they?" If you're going from New York to Boston or Boston to London
you're going to follow a similar route no matter what kind of cable you are
putting down.

------
rbcgerard
I recall reading some magazine article in the 90's about some entrepreneurs
who bought rights of way from railroads to lay fiber optic lines and then sold
the package to someone like global crossing for a mint - point being is that i
suspect even on land, major internet infrastructure in one way or another
piggybacked on the vestiges of another age...

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Here in Chicago, fiber is either tied to the 100+ year old L tracks or run
through the more recent L tunnels. The L has a system length of just a tad
over 100 miles and covers a good part of the city. Makes perfect sense to run
everything through there. The only downside I see is that its within easy each
of vandals in some locations, especially where the L tracks start descending
into tunnels.

There was an article not too long ago about how some parts of India still rely
on telegraph for any sort of communication and the government's plan to
modernize it all. I'm a little surprised no one has figured out a DSL-like
technology to use existing telegraph lines for high speed data. According to
wikipedia the German postoffice had a 50 baud link working in 1933 using
teleprinters. Even a 512kb link would be of use, assuming we can beat those
speeds by 10x 80 years later.

~~~
VLM
Something to think about WRT India is the telegraph wiring was designed for
non-electrified areas, it works fine with one giant chemical battery in the
main office, basically all the keys and sounders are in electrical series. Old
fashioned copper gravity batteries instead of modern power supplies and things
like that. Some rural areas of India are only 80% electrified. I suspect power
could be an issue.

In the US, power companies love pulling in fiber with their cables, both for
internal SCADA control and resale. No point sending out two cabling crews
along two paths... so places that tend to have power tend to have fiber
connectivity. It might be similar in India. So no fiber because its a rural
area with no power lines and eventually they'll get both at the same time.

~~~
digi_owl
You have something similar with POTS. There the phones are powered from the
switches, complete with x days of UPS mandated by law (thus even if your area
lose power, you can still call for help).

But this is expensive to maintain for the telcos (all that copper wiring etc)
so increasingly they want to replace it all with mobile networks.

------
VLM
A map of relative population changes over the last 150 years or so would be
informative WRT the original topic.

I suspect the relative population has changed quite a bit more in Las Vegas
than NYC for example. Or even regionally, look at the recent growth of the
south, after the invention of air conditioning.

~~~
dredmorbius
Centers of _commerce_ will buy you more than population. Stunning
correspondence between solar and data flows.

~~~
dredmorbius
Damn you autocorrect. "dollar", not "solar".

------
stevewilhelm
'A Thread Across the Ocean: The Heroic Story of the Transatlantic Cable'
chronicles the technical and business aspects of laying the first
transatlantic telegraph cable.

[http://amzn.com/0060524464](http://amzn.com/0060524464)

------
jvanderbot
A simple, intuitive algorithm for connecting many sites using the minimum wire
exists.

Same problem, likely same solution: Minimum Spanning Trees.

~~~
a3voices
But how will your algorithm negotiate with the governments of countries to put
cables through their borders at specific points.

