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Comment by masfuerte | Hacker News Reader

> In Terry Pratchett's science-fantasy Discworld series, "The Clacks" is a network infrastructure of Semaphore Towers, that operate in a similar fashion to telegraph - named "Clacks" because of the clicking sound the system makes as signals send.

Surely named "Clacks" because of the clacking sound the system makes.

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The Clacks is a copy of an optical telegraph system that was used in Sweden

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Niclas_Edelcrantz

Also UK used a system close to that. And a lot of countries along Europe developed their networks with different signaling devices.

Sorry; it's more likely they were named in tribute to the Chappe telegraph towers of France.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chappe_telegraph

The stations were more elaborate and there is even a recorded instance of a secret signal being passed on illicitly:

https://blog.franceinfo.fr/deja-vu/2017/10/10/le-piratage-du...

A good related book written by Gerard Holzmann and Bjorn Pehrson:

The early history of data networks https://archive.org/details/earlyhistoryofda0000holz

It makes for an interesting subplot in the (unabridged) version of The Count of Monte Cristo, which is mentioned in the Wikipedia article above.

Sorry, it's more likely he named them after the noise of navy signal lamps that use shutters: here's a video with the sound

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=c2G0wu-jbko

No, it really was France, I'm afraid.

https://terrypratchett.com/explore-discworld/the-modernisati...

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