How a subsea cable is repaired (2021)(onesteppower.com) |
How a subsea cable is repaired (2021)(onesteppower.com) |
A Neal Stephenson long read about undersea cables. So good!
The new and novel thing in 1996 from the author's perspective is cables being built not by a PTT type "telephone company" (the Bell System/AT&T, BT, France Telecom, etc) but a new entity that intended to build the cables to sell capacity to multiple telcos.
I've added this book to my list, and it looks like a short read.
Thanks. Hope I like it.
In 2026 this is a surprisingly non-pearl clutching take on British influence abroad.
For anyone who wants to know more about the early history of undersea cables, I also enjoyed ‘A Thread Across the Ocean’ by John Steele Gordon.
That left me wondering now, how would that even work? The wiretapping, that is
Has a good story of how it was done several decades ago. Not sure how it works these days.
Even if it's not automated, the number of cores in multicore fibers tends to be pretty low, and there's a standard for marking fibers [1], that's similar-ish to the standard for marking copper pairs [2].
Does it mean that there's a ton of repeaters under the sea? Where do they get the power from?
the extra interesting part i think is how they amplify the signal without having to decode it, just optically
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable...
If anyone is curious as to why it took so long: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_telegraph_cable
TLDR: "smearing" of the signal (capacitance), no underwater amplifiers, very faint signal at the end.
(This is a really meandering article!)
Two notes of interest, it only covers "British influence abroad" at one specific location for a relatively short interval of time, and it neatly avoids looking too deeply into a classic of British colonialism; the divide and conquer approach of strategically favouring some over others to push any resulting unrest at arms length away from the actual British.
By what metric? Recall that not all people value the same things.
The outcome of British colonialism in Tasmania was 100% extinction of locals - I mean sure, you can call that incredible as you did, but that was never a word used by Truganini
Jamaica, sure, greatest Winter Olympic team ever .. but hardly the poster child for colonialism and impossible to claim as "better off" than sans or alt colonialism.
Uganda, well, ... enough said.
We can likely agree that the expanding British Empire had a tremendous eye for real estate, resources, and location. The bulk of places colonised by the British had plenty of potential for exploitation and exploited they largely were.
The arc of such colonies once the sun set and the Empire retracted was varied, the lucky ones were able to reclaim local control of their own resources and relations, a good many were largely stripped and left to flounder locked into ongoing situations not of their making.
Most important of all, and directly attributable to British influence was getting rid of princely states that owed their allegiance to the British crown. Britain made it clear that they would not accept independent states and every princely state would have to accede to India or Pakistan.
Britain really tried to help India (and Pakistan) succeed. The blame for some of the failures and mistakes can’t be attributed to the British (Indian economic policy before 1991, Pakistani policy towards Bengali speakers), but they deserve partial credit for the political and economic success of India.
People who aren’t Indian can’t understand how remarkable it is that India has stayed united and functional. Even Indians who haven’t lived outside India underestimate it. Indians have diversity within similar to Europe, but the country remains united. A big part of that is that the current Indian state is a successor to the British Raj, which in turn was a successor to the Mughal Raj. The longer India is ruled from Delhi, the more normal it feels.
This unity is the source of Indian success. Without it India would resemble Africa more than Europe. More resources would have been wasted fighting wars within India and all of India would still be struggling with poverty, famine and starvation instead of manufacturing iPhones.
People often caricature this argument by saying sO wHaT iF tHeY bUiLt RaIlWaYs. The Railways don’t matter, they could have been built earlier or later. But once a polity fractures and blood has been spilt, there’s no fixing that.
China did have interactions with Britain, disputes over trade, access, addictive drug running, gunboat diplomacy et al. but these usually fall under British Imperialism rather than British Colonialism.
India you should compare to India's trajectory had British rule not occurred.
How? Fantasize?
You do seem to make a lot of unsupported statements that seem more akin to belief than observable facts.