Email In the 18th Century 279
morphovar forwards a writeup in Low-tech Magazine recounting an almost-forgotten predecessor to email and packet-switched messaging: the optical telegraph. The article maps out some of the European networks but provides no details of those built in North America in the early 1800s. Man-in-the-middle attacks were dead easy. "More than 200 years ago it was already possible to send messages throughout Europe and America at the speed of an airplane — wireless and without need for electricity. The optical telegraph network consisted of a chain of towers ... placed 5 to 20 kilometers apart from each other. Every tower had a telegrapher, looking through a telescope at the previous tower in the chain. If the semaphore on that tower was put into a certain position, the telegrapher copied that symbol on his own tower. A message could be transmitted from Amsterdam to Venice in one hour's time. A few years before, a messenger on a horse would have needed at least a month's time to do the same."
Ah, Clacks (Score:5, Informative)
"Minor" mistake but... (Score:4, Informative)
"provides no details of those built in North America in the early 1800s. Man-in-the-middle attacks were dead easy"
The "early 1800's" is the 19th Century - not 18th.
Re:did china do this as well on the great wall? (Score:4, Informative)
Common in Italy in the middle agaes (Score:3, Informative)
Sempahore towers (Score:3, Informative)
There are still some left in Barbados:
http://photo.clifford.ac/2007/Barbados.October/tn/dscn2211.jpg.index.html [clifford.ac]
and here is what you see when looking at Cotton Tower from Grendade Hall:
http://photo.clifford.ac/2004/Barbados.April/tn/p4130674.jpg.index.html [clifford.ac]
--
Alan clifford
RTFA! (Score:2, Informative)
They're in an old movie too (Score:3, Informative)
I remember first seeing these in an old movie, which I remember as being in black-and-white. It may have been an old version of The Count of Monte Cristo.
Sorry, but... (Score:5, Informative)
Colored flags, whistling arrows, fires & hand signals all worked as part of a communication chain that spanned greater distances as well (6,400 km).
And 'man-in-the-middle' attacks were usually over before they began
Re:Spam? (Score:3, Informative)
In an 18th-century British accent: "Oh bloody hell, I shall not need my wanker any bloody bigger! May the Queen assign lasting damnation upon your deplorable message."
Read The Victorian Internet (Score:2, Informative)
taggers are fucking illiterate (Score:5, Informative)
BEACONS.
If you can't afford a dictionary, rednecks, at least Google.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Spam? (Score:4, Informative)
I live in fear that this may be marked informative.
Re:Spam? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:"Minor" mistake but... (Score:5, Informative)
The compiler is more than capable of doing this transformation. The real reason is because the vast majority of algorithms are easier to describe with the first index as zero -- this was a lesson learned from FORTRAN, which started indexing at 1.
Re:Spam? (Score:3, Informative)
I doubt it for simple economical reasons. Theese networks were probablly more expensive to use than the postal service and unsolicited bulk messages aren't really very urgent.
Re:Chappe's telegraph and buiding of a fortune (Score:5, Informative)
-Rothschilds get information early
-other people know rothschilds get the information early
-rothschilds dump all their stock
-everyone else dumps their stock
-stock crashes
-rothschilds buy everything
massive stock manipulation, but I guess that was legal back then.
(or at least this is the version I heard)
more more (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Spam? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, it wasn't. The electrical telegraph had a very rocky start. Both France and Britain had optical telegraphs in place and were uninterested in investing in this new "electric" form of telegraph. Especially since those who worked on electric telegraphs were often untrained quacks.
It took a relatively new nation that lacked a telegraph (i.e. the United States) to cause the electric version to catch on. Even there, it took a while before the possibilities were really explored. Once it caught on, though, it caught on like wildfire. Didn't take long for an international telegraph to get setup, and for ticker-tape machines to appear.
For those interested in the topic, I highly recommend the book The Victorian Internet [amazon.com]. It is well written, well researched, and tells a fascinating tale of the telegraph development that parallels the development of the Internet. On top of that, it sheds light on how the telegraph affected computer design and the communications protocols we use today. (e.g. ASCII is derived from the telegraph codeset called "Baudot Codes". Named for the inventor, Émile Baudot. He also has a measure of transmission speed named after him called "Baud". As in, a "300 Baud Modem". )
Re:Spam? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:did china do this as well on the great wall? (Score:3, Informative)
The roman signal stations are still on the Ordnance Survey maps in Perthshire [streetmap.co.uk] with signal stations some 1km to 3 km apart on hill tops. This link shows a signal station proximity to a camp with a much bigger fort to the west. infact, this area of Scotland is littered with roman remains because they had to exit in a big hurry regularly as the Scots kicked italian ass on a regular basis.
they also had signal stations on the Antonine Wall [wikipedia.org] which was some 100km north of the famous Hadrians Wall.
So this is very much email in the 122AD to 250AD century - although, it didn't help the romans much. they had too much physical infrastructure that was a big disadvantage in the guerrilla tactics of the Scots and thus were not flexible enough to change. There are lots of parallels with the US tactics in Iraq and one wanders whether the tacticians have been researching their roman history well enough before deploying assets in the middle east.
Urban legend (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Postal mail used to be pretty good, too. (Score:3, Informative)