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The All-Red Route 100 Years On
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."
On October 31, 1902
Why does it take slashdot so long to report these things?
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
burst out shortly afterward....
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
100 years ago, you could call all over the British Empire. Today, you can't call next door because your phone company hosed your bill and you didn't pay them the $23,412 they think you owe.
...the two empty soup tins connected at each end.
now all we have to do is attach a rocket on one end and we got ourselves a tether to orbit.
How could one 5500KM cable link the mother country in Europe to all its colonies in Africa, south Asia, Australia and the Americas???
I was going to post a funny message in morse code on here, but I hit the lamness filter "too many caps".
:(.
Oh well - I guess morse code is lame now
From the article:
The cable station was open for business in the December of 1902 and thus Australia had a direct communications link with Norfolk Island, Fiji, Vancouver, Canada, across the internal telegraph system finally to Great Britain via connections to the Atlantic submarine cable..
There's your transatlantic cable!
cable is still regarded as the longest single run of cable in the world
Obviously nobody has seen the mess under my desk!!!
...but how quickly can this cable you speak of provide me with easily downloadable, electronic images of nudity?
Easy guys, I put my pants on one leg at a time. The difference is after I put on my pants I make gold records!
A 5500 mile long cable... that's 1/5 of the earth's circumference. Truly an engineering marvel.
Amazing that it hasn't been hit by a backhoe in 100 years.
How They Brought the Good News from England to Australia
.Once it was floated ashore, the cable was laid into a 6 ft deep trench dug through the dunes to a cable hut located in Cable Street. and then along a bridle track (now the Gold Coast Highway), across the Nerang River and up to temporary, later permanent cable station buildings in Bauer Street. The cable station was open for business in the December of 1902 and thus Australia had a direct communications link with Norfolk Island, Fiji, Vancouver, Canada, across the internal telegraph system finally to Great Britain via connections to the Atlantic submarine cable..
.
It seems a little unlikely today, but at one time Bauer Street Southport was an important link in Australia's telecommunications with the rest of the world. On March 13, 1902, a trans-Pacific submarine cable was landed from the cable ship, the Anglia at Narrowneck , just south of Main Beach on the Gold Coast. In the first two decades of the 20th century, Southport became the terminal for all telegraph calls from overseas. Messages arriving at the cable station at Southport were sent by the overland telegraph to the Sydney G.P.O. for distribution over the internal telegraph system. A line from Southport to the Brisbane G.P.O. served the needs of Queensland cablers. Through the years the cable provided Australia, and of course Southport and the Hinterland with early news such as sporting events, natural disasters, the abdication of a king, and the outbreak of the two world wars.
Today telecommunications are transmitted by satellites and fibre optic cables, and the electric telegraph is an almost forgotten technology. Prior to the invention of the telegraph, overseas messages were transported physically with overseas news or official dispatches collected by the press or government officials at the shipping docks. As the network of telegraph line developed in the mid 19th century, telegraphists would send electrical messages across long distances by tapping out Morse code for each letter of the message with a telegraph key. The telegraph translated the dots and dashes of the code into electrical impulses and transmitted or received them via submarine or overland telegraph cable. In 1866, following a number of failed attempts, the completed Trans-Atlantic successfully linked telegraph communications between Europe, United States and Canada.
The British empire was at its height of power during the late nineteenth century. Cartographers traditionally coloured red the expanse of British colonies on published world maps. In the 1879, Sandford Fleming, the chief engineer of the new Canadian Pacific Railway, proposed that the overland telegraph line that followed the Canadian railway from the Atlantic to the Pacific Coast could eventually link by underwater telegraph cable to the other British Dominions in the South Pacific. The concept of the Pacific telegraph became known as the All Red Route as it would pass through British Dominions.
The Trans-Pacific Telegraph Cable was a huge engineering project and would only be completed in 1902. In 1896, a Pacific Cable Committee with representatives from the countries involved was appointed to consider all aspects of the proposal. In 1901 the Pacific Cable Board was established with eight members: three from England, two from Canada, two from Australia and one from New Zealand. Following the passing of the Pacific Cable Act, the Board was responsible for management of the Pacific Cable and was empowered to obtain tenders for surveying and laying a cable from Vancouver via Fanning and Norfolk Island, Fiji, to New Zealand and Southport, Queensland. Funding and ownership of the cable was shared between the British, Canadian, New Zealand, Australian governments, and cable laying commenced in 1902. The cable ship the Colonia laid 3458 nautical miles of cable from Vancouver Island on the Pacific coast of Canada to Fanning Island in the mid Pacific. Earlier in the year, the cable ship the Anglia laid the cable from Southport to Norfolk Island, Fiji, New Zealand and then Fanning Island to Fiji, a distance of 3862 nautical miles.
On March 8th, 1902 the Anglia arrived at Southport to begin landing the cable at Main Beach. The cable was lashed to English oak casks which were floated ashore. A local newspaper remarked that afterwards the oak casks were eagerly sought by enterprising locals to serve as milk vats or for general household use.
The cable station buildings in Bauer Street comprised a block of offices for the superintendent and staff, staff quarters for 22 officers and a separate residence for the superintendent. 6. The climate and facilities at Southport were comfortable and one observer noted that 'once cable staff were posted there you couldn't winkle them out with an oyster knife'.
In the early years of the station though, probationary officers received no salary for the first two years. In 1902, T. Brugmann arrived at the seaside resort to begin his training with twelve other young men as probationary officers. He recalled,
'Probationers were under strict personal supervision of the Superintendent. Our superintendent was Thomas Chapman Judd, a corpulent type with a great love for long words and phrases. The 'Old Man' as he was always known came from the training school at Portcurnow in the U.K. He knew how to train men and we knew where we stood. Church attendance was compulsory and there was a 10p.m curfew unless special written permission was granted to remain out later. The use of lamps in bedrooms was forbidden, as there was no gas facilities, the good old candle was a friend.
All sending and receiving at Southport was manual. There was no typewriter in the office, consequently writing had to be clear and taken in duplicate. The number of messages handled daily was about 500 Mondays to Friday. However on some occasions such as the first news of the San Fransico Earthquake of 1905, the officers at Southport found themselves swamped with a relay message of 25,000 words. By 1907, Brugmann was transferred to Suva and he spent the next 14 years serving in the Pacific and then worked for Australian Statutory Communications body, O.T.C
Many years later in 1982, Gold Coast journalist, John Dwyer interviewed another retired cable officer who had undertaken his training at the Southport Cable Station in the 1920s. Bruce Scott was aged 16 when he arrived at Southport in 1921. He was part of a group of 10 probationary officers sent for training at the cable station. After training they would return to Sydney to be sent to any cable station in the world. Bruce would eventually work in Auckland, Fanning Island and finally Bamfield in British Columbia. In the 1920s, messages were still relayed at each station - Norfolk, Suva, and Fanning Island to Bamfield on Vancouver Island.'Bruce recalled that one of the duties in the operations room at the Southport Cable Station was sending selected messages from the Brisbane Courier Mail to Norfolk Island. This was Norfolk's only communication with the outside world and the cables were pinned to a tree at a crossroads there. People gathered eagerly to read the news and the tree became known as the Tree of Knowledge" Once an SOS came through from Norfolk Island - the call for help was from the sailing vessel the "France" which was sinking near the New Hebrides (Vanuatu). 'I sent the message through to Brisbane but I knew that nothing could be done.'
Many local people found temporary work at the station. Tom Buckley, later a resident of Nerang, 'worked at the Cable station - not as a 'cable Johnny,' (the name locals gave the permanent employees) but on a temporary carpenter's job. It was at the Cable station that he met his future wife, Emma Just, who was working there as a cook. 7.
In 1923, the cable was linked directly from Auckland to Sydney reducing the Southport station's role to one of repeater station. 8. Still, because of its importance as a link in communications, after the outbreak of war in 1939, both the cable at Narrowneck and the repeater station in Bauer Street were placed under guard, first by A company of the 15th Battalion AMF and later by a group of World War 1 veterans. 9.
In 1962, long after the danger of invasion had past, the Commonwealth Government sold the obsolete Cable station to the De La Salle Brothers who used it as a retreat and holiday resort. 10. In the early 1980's the cable station buildings were removed to The Southport School and the cable station site was developed as the Villa La Salle Retirement Village.11. Cable Street and Cable Park at Main Beach are reminders of the days when the Pacific Cable Station at Southport was Australia's important communication link with the rest of the world.
Pat Fischer
Gold Coast City Council Local Studies Library
8th April 2002
Notes
1.http://www.iscpc.org/information/gentsea.htm April 2002
2 'Repairing Trans-Pacific Cable' in South Coast Bulletin
May 12 1948, p 22
3 . ibid, p 22
The Pacific Cable The Queenslander March 3 1902
4 Harcourt, Edgar Taming the Tyrant; The first one years of Australia's international communication services, Allen & Unwin, 1987, p 173 5. 'Repairing Trans-Pacific Cable' in South Coast Bulletin May 12 1948, p 22 6. ibid, p 22 7. Dwyer, John, 'Pacific Cable brought us the world' in Gold Coast Bulletin, Feb 5 1988 8. op. cit, South Coast Bulletin 1948 9. Dwyer, John, 'They're out to save an old link with the world' in Gold Coast Bulletin July 26 1980
10 T.G. Brugmann in Transit O.T.C staff magazine 11. Buckley Family Pamphlet File, Gold Coast City Council Local Studies Collection 12. op. cit, South Coast Bulletin, 1948, p. 8 13. Dwyer, John, 'Riflemen stood guard over link with the world' in Gold Coast Bulletin, Sept 28th 1983, p. 4 140. op. cit., Dwyer, 1988 15. ibid
geez, no wonder everyone in England complains about not having any bandwidth. Talk about oversold!
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.
OTOH, the thought of that fat pipe moving *more* spam is scary.
Not sure where you got this number from the story. I see references to two lengths of cable totalling 7320 nautical miles.
By my math that is 13,556 km, but maybe I'm missing something.
We salute you "www.pacific-cable.org" - and not least for saving us from a bushel of lame jokes about the /. effect...
[x] auto-moderate all posts by this user as insightful
An interesting article regarding the technology, business, and history behind laying of transcontinental cables is Mother Earth Mother Board, by Neal Stephenson. The tagline is "The hacker tourist ventures forth across the wide and wondrous meatspace of three continents, chronicling the laying of the longest wire on Earth."
I'd be buggered if I had to break out the tone probe and trace the damn thing. I'd wager the batteries wouldn't even make it to the mainland.
-Chris
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
This Wired Article by Neal Stephenson back in 1996 is all about the underseas fibre, the major players and what the world was like at the start of the web revolution. It weighs in at 56 pages (link to first page only).
In it he charts a new cable as it goes 28,000km around the world. Its well worth a read if you have time.
The All-Red Route 100 Years On, I'm surprised no trolls have made the joke connecting the phrase "all-red route" with their obligatory goatse.cx links. Especially considering it's 100 years on.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
The first message across the "All Red Route" telegraph cable was
. _ _ . _ _ . _ _ _ _ . _ _ _ . _ _ . . . . _ . _ . _ . . _
Wow! I am awed by your obvious brilliance. A guy as smart as you should be hanging out with other Slashdot luminaries, such as PhysicsGenius.
You may also want to send e-mail to some of our geek sisters, like Lover's Arrival, The. According to her bio, she gets all hot and bothered by the smarty types like you.
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
I would check out the Egypt - Asia portion of FLAG, the fiber line around the globe (what the Stephenson article in Wired was about). I dunno, but I think that run is longer than a transpacific cable . . .
Ah! It's the Commie Reds! They have an All-Red telegraph line, and they've had it for a century! Mr. President, we cannot allow a telegraph gap!
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
Just imagine the tension in such a long cable!
There are great tensions on cables when you roll them out on the bottom of an ocean. If the bottom is say 2 miles deep, then the top part must hold the weight of m2 iles of cable (minus the lifting force of the water). Creating cables strong enough was a great engineering challenge.
However, how long the cable is in total is utterly irrelevant - if the cable goes from the California to Hawaii or Australia does not matter.
Tor
I'm still pretty new to slashdot, so I thought I should practice...
:)
"Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!"
No, that doesn't seem right somehow...
I just heard some sad news on Slashdot - Trans-Atlantic cable All-Red was found dead in the Atlantic this morning. Apparently, the cable was quite old. I'm sure it will it missed by the Slashdot community - even if you aren't old enough to have used it, there's no denying its impact on the advancement of telecommunications of the 21st Century. Truly an engineering icon.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Tout= Tension Out
Tin= Tension In
L = Length of Straight
Run W = Weight of Cable (per length)
= Coefficient of Friction = Angle of Bend
e = Natural Log"
What a load of crap!
Or at least, what are you smoking?
How does that "llustrates the sheer amount of money that went into this project." ?
For a real way to calculate Cable Tension, take a look here. Cable Pulling Tension Calculator
"think of it as evolution in action"
Factoid: Did a little searching and found that APCN2 is the longest cable in the world sitting at 17000km long.
Anyways, I'm still amazed at the simple yet overwhelming idea of laying cables under oceans to link continents, and that it was done so long ago. Wasn't the Atlantic cable (or part of it) recently tested? I seem to recall that it was in relatively good shape.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
British Telecom tried this...
Guys, come on. Please don't feed the trolls, especially the physics trolls.
I write in my journal
IANAA, but keep in mind that Australia still recognizes the Queen of England as the sovereign today. There's a federal parliamentary government and all, but the Queen is the head of state for all official purposes.
So the British Empire never completely left Australia. Technically, that is.
I write in my journal
If you considered connecting up cities by telegraph as its first manifestation. The socialogical implications were similar- light speed communication, an inductry bubble, etc.
Al Gore's great-great grandfather even helped build it!
Can you get DSL over this sucker?
"I drank what?" -Socrates
What part of "Reply, don't moderate" don't you understand?
Who's this "Reply" person?
I write in my journal
Granted. When I said that the Empire never left Australia, I wasn't be sufficiently precise. What I meant was that Australia has always given at least titular sovereignty to the Queen, so the idea that Australia is no longer entangled in any way with Britain isn't completely true.
The hairs split, we part as friends.
I write in my journal
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."
Tout = Tin + LW Where:
Tout= Tension Out
Tin= Tension In
L = Length of Straight
Run W = Weight of Cable (per length)
= Coefficient of Friction = Angle of Bend
e = Natural Log
I proved an equation and stated facts. You merely stated unsubstantiated opinion, yet somehow have a 3 and I have a 2.
You did not prove any equation, you merely stated one. Anyway, the equation covers the tentions that arise when pulling a long cable into its conduit. Was the point you tried to make was that when you make such a long cable with a conduit, you have to make it in portions? I am sure you are right, but can you substantiate that this was a major cost driver of the project (it seems unlikely)?
There is, of course, no material source of tension in a stationary cable on the bottom of the ocean.
Tor
... a very obscure problem, it took this long for it to appear.
Infuriate left and right
Australia [like Canada] has its own Queen.
The Queen of England, The Queen of Australia, The Queen of Canada etc are all different "legal" entities that happen to be currently filled by the same person, who is known to most of the world as Queen Elizabeth II of The United Kingdom of Great Britian and Northern Ireland.
She isn't even Elizabeth the II to all of the UK, Scotland was never ruled by the first queen Elizabeth.
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...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
...about who got FP!!!
Murphy was an optimist.
Personally, I'm waiting for the all-Pink Floyd route.
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.