Have you thought about that? Today we don’t think much about that. But back then, decades ago, before there was wifi and before there were satellites that transmitted the internet signals, before all of that … how did the internet get across the Atlantic Ocean? or the Pacific Ocean? Sure, on land people could lay cables in the ground, or in the air along with phone lines and power lines. But the oceans … they certainly couldn’t have floated the lines. Well, I got to thinking about this and did some research and found a ton of interesting stuff. Well, it was interesting to me. 🙂
Basically, it was Morse code wires that first started it all, back in the 1800s. Morse code was transmitted on telegraph cables … dit dah, dah dit, dah dit … etc. Oh, by the way, what I just wrote in Morse code is my name, Ann. The “dit” is a short quick double tap on the Morse code sender … the “dah” is a longer double tap with more time between the first and second tap. So the letter A is a quick tap-tap (or dit) and then a slower tap—tap (or dah) … that’s the letter A. What’s your name? Ok how about Tim? In Morse code that would be dah dit dit (for T), then dit dit (for I), then dah dah (for M). And then, what about SOS? SOS, help, I need help! That’s dit-dit-dit (rapidly), then dah-dah-dah (a tiny bit slower), then dit-dit-dit again. In real life, they didn’t wait and start the message over, they simply continued with three dits and three dahs and three dits and three dahs and three dits ….. HELP!
Morse code could be sent by radio, but that didn’t reach very far when you were out on the ocean, or you wanted to send a message to another country, an important political message across an entire ocean, before telephones. So what did they do? They laid wires on the floor of the ocean (back in the 1800’s!) wires that would carry those simple dit and dah signals … that’s all those lines back then carried, dit and dah, etc.
The average depth of the Atlantic Ocean is 12,000 feet, more than 2 MILES deep. The average depth of the Pacific Ocean is more, about 13,000 feet, but the deepest part of the Pacific is over on the western side of the Pacific … it’s 36,000 feet deep or almost SEVEN miles deep. Wow. Think about it … they laid cables on the bottom of the ocean in those depths back in the 1800’s just for this Morse code system. And that’s what started it all!
Then came telephone signals (and those cables), then came data signals (and those cables), eventually internet (and those cables). And, of course, the new lines had to be laid while the old ones were simply left there (and are still down there). New lines had to be laid with every upgrade, improvement, new technology, or because lines on the floor of the ocean had been damaged by “whatever”. Divers could not dive that deep. If a line failed, they simply had to lay a new line, an entire new line (or multiple lines, plural, for redundancy) from one continent to the other. Here’s a short little video showing just a tiny bit of how cable laying goes these days.
If you’re interested in reading more information, here’s a Wikipedia article about the history of all of this … https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable. I found it fascinating. Now, today, we just click and get online, or maybe we have to actually log in to some website or other. Now we take these connections and communications for granted.
I remember as a child when our household got the first television set of anyone in the neighborhood, back in the 1950’s. It was so small, with a black and white picture, and one channel. ONE channel. Look how far we’ve come, just in my one lifetime. But think too, of those folks back in the 1800’s who were first developing and laying cable across oceans. What a BIG deal that was back then! And my gosh what it has led to today that those people never envisioned. Even if the only signal sent on those early cables was dit-dit, then a pause and then dit-dah-dit-dit …. dah-dah-dah …. dit-dit-dit-dah …. dit, and then a pause and then dah-dit-dah-dah …. dah-dah-dah …. dit-dit-dah. Even just that would have been wonderful and amazing to people back then, and the start of our worldwide internet signals today.
What did that last bit of dits and dahs in that last paragraph say? It says … I love you.