
How Railroad History Shaped Internet History - danwyd
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/how-railroad-history-shaped-internet-history/417414/?single_page=true
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saosebastiao
If you are in for a rabbit-hole of parallels between the Internet and
Railroads, definitely check out the publications of Andrew Odlyzko [1]. For a
mathematician, he has accumulated some of the most fascinating history
surrounding the Internet Bubble and Railway Mania. He's written several papers
on Railway Mania, but one in particular [2] has so many interesting anecodotes
and analyses of the failures of investors during the time that it deserves to
be found bound in leather on the top of the desks of VC partners everywhere.
Also to be found: critiques of Metcalf's law, contributions to the solution to
Fermat's Last Theorem, as well as some interesting analysis and work on
cryptography and cryptocurrency.

[1] [http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/](http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/) [2]
[http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/hallucinations.pdf](http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/hallucinations.pdf)

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jefurii
My son is 4 years old and very into trains, and we've lots of trips to local
train switchyards together. It's interesting how similar it is to the
Internet: packets (shipping containers) are received from input devices
(ships) at ports (ports). Routers (switchyard) send them along lines towards
their destinations. The first people to be called hackers were those in the
MIT model railroad club who tinkered with the electrical stuff under the
table.

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chubot
Perhaps this is pointing out the obvious, but railroad history is in turn
influenced by natural/geological history. I took the train across the country
and much of the track and all of the major stations are built along rivers and
other major bodies of water.

