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The All-Red Route 100 Years On

Posted by Hemos on from the stop-blast-from-the-past-stop dept.

An anonymous reader writes "On October 31, 1902, the first messages were sent along the All-Red Route -- a 5500km telegraph cable linking the whole of the British Empire. First envisioned in 1879, the long-decomissioned cable is still regarded as the longest single run of cable in the world."

4 of 158 comments (clear)

  1. Transatlantic cable more important by MtViewGuy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    While the All-Red Route was an impressive achievement, the first transatlantic cable laid in the 1860's was a much more impressive and historically important achievement, given that it was the first time a transocean telegraph cable was attempted and it took several tries to successfully lay the cable between Ireland and Newfoundland.

    What's interesting was it wasn't until the late 1950's and early 1960's that we finally achieved the technology to send voice messages on undersea cables on a large scale. Of course, today with fiber optic cables we can send even high-bandwidth data like video through these cables; a huge fraction of international Internet traffic nowadays are transmitted through these cables.

  2. Funny by The+Bungi · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I was reading this article that talks about the increasing importance of the trans-pacific capacity due to, you guessed it, China.

    OTOH, the thought of that fat pipe moving *more* spam is scary.

  3. "All-Pink" route would have been a better name by Zerbey · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Cartographers usually colour British colonies Pink, not Red but maybe it was different in the 19th and early 20th century. Does a better informed Slashdotter know?

    All British schoolchildren have been shown the map of the British empire at the height of its powers, and given the standard lecture about how much better it was when the world was Pink. It's an oft-heard saying by older British Citizens. "Ahhh... I can remember when the world was Pink, and good King George was on the throne... etc. etc."

  4. Just curious... by NeuroManson · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Has anyone tried seeing if a signal could still be carried on the cable? Would be a cute test to see if it held up to the century of existance...

    Or, just to play on the irony, run some packets over it do a bit of IRC or telnet chatting...

    --
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