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Stratoscope

Here's a 1901 version of the map:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/1901_East...

And somewhat related, a wonderful book called The Victorian Internet:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0802716040/

If you ever wondered whether the Internet really is a "series of tubes", here are the tubes:

http://www.popsci.com/files/imagecache/article_image_large/f...

That photo is from an interesting article (by my namesake James Geary) about undersea cables:

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-03/who-protects-i...

Enjoy! :-)

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Thanks for posting the 1901 map. I'm amazed at the extent of the network back then.

Of course, in 1901, each of those lines was measured in (low double-digit) words per minute. Now the metric is more like feature films per second. And the word "cable" once again means a communication line, not a message transferred over one.

I do find it impressive that Australia was more or less connected to the rest of the world by telecommunications in 1872 once the overland telegraph line was completed. The US was only connected reliably connected to Europe about six years earlier in 1866. So not a bad effort given the vaster geographic distances to span between Europe and Australia.

The two linked popsci.com pages are both giving 404 errors for me – are you able to find a working link? They look interesting!

(Technically speaking, the web server is returning 200 OK, but it's 'Page Not Found')

Hmm... Not sure what could be wrong there. The links are both working for me. I wonder if anyone else is getting the 404 errors?

popsci.com seems to be redirecting for Australian-based IP addresses. Fails for me in Sydney, but works from my US-based VPS. This is the image: http://i41.tinypic.com/zx05kw.jpg and the Wayback Machine has the article: http://web.archive.org/web/20101231014805/http://www.popsci....

Thanks very much – I am indeed trying from Australia. Seems insane that they're breaking URLs in an attempt to serve us 'local' content.

I gave up on Popular Science years ago because of exactly that...

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