A correction: At 1:30(ish) - I mean 1837 rather than 1937. A further correction: At 0:28 - Faraday invented the first electric motor, not battery. Faraday built on Alessandro Volta's work after creating the Voltaic pile. ANOTHER correction: At 13:00 This should be 100 for 2,000 miles. Although closer to 200 were needed for the longer distances these cables were span across. This is my fault for trying to error check at 3am with no coffee. Apologies, and I hope it doesn't infringe on your viewing pleasure too much.
0:29 - Alessandro Volta invented the first battery, in 1800, not Faraday. 8:55 - You mean Antonio Meucci did that, as acknowledged by the US Government in 2000. Bell outright copyright trolled the Italian.
Never worry about the mistakes mate. The fact that people spot them means your content was interesting enough for people to pay attention to. You've crammed a lot of detail into this video. There's absolutely no shame in getting a few details wrong. It's obviously not through lack of understanding. It's just the verbal equivalent of a typo. I think this is one of your best videos content wise. Made for great viewing whilst eating my chinese takeaway.
5:40 "[Mistaken] that electricity flowed like water rather than pulses [as was soon accepted]. British Engineer *WildMan WhiteHouse* tried to _force a higher voltage_ down the line to _force the messages_ through. This just _FRIED the cable_ until it stopped working!" That early cabling never could have worked especially with an impure core resistance too much like a heating element. But in the history books/vid streams a poor single loley British Engineer really took the fall for frying it. Maybe he should have awaited further opinions but still perhaps a bit unfairly, with it arguably making little difference? At least it finally proved to all that a MUCH more thought out approach in every way was needed! Continuing the water analogy, _current_ is still used and I've heard China interuses pressure with amperage. ;]
@@djosearth3618 Er, *loley*? Is that what they sing in rumba songs? Or is it foley artists running down metallic staircases, as they often seem to do, while listening to samples of bullets ricocheting on thingummies? I'd love to know, to be able to interuse it.
@@Grayvorn That was a Mr. Plinkett quote 😄 But I remember it too 👍
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To think about, that in 1988 280Mbps was the total capacity between the two continents, and now I have a 500Mbps connection to the world from my home, is.. unreal. It's only 31 years apart. What a time to be alive. Thanks for this extremely well edited video!
i know... I really enjoy living these times... but I CAN'T feel happy because I could born like 30, 50, or even 100 years later to see more IMPROVENTS! damn..
Hmm... I'm surprised there hasn't been a James Bond where the villain plots to disconnect the cables underwater and cause global economic disaster. They could have sharks with lasers.
laser sharks ! I like it. Would definitely be a better plot than the current diversicult social justice rubbish being rammed into Bond and other action cinema.
my great aunt worked for bell labs and the govnt developing sonar for the military back in the day. Its really interesting to see the humble beginings, and the effort and hopefulness of the projects, not to mention the scale. Thank god for those older folk who actually made the world a better place, without concern of recognition.
@referral madness yes, lots of people that are older 60, 70, and 80 years old that would remember how difficult it was to make international phone calls.
@referral madness Well, within reason, how new and difficult a technology is/was, can be measured by the prices of using them. I am 27 years old. My parents needed to go to special "phone call centrals" to call their parents (Sweden to Lebanon) when I was a child (I don't remember that), but what I remember is how expensive it was later, when you could buy "call-cards" with a code to type in. (Call operator of card > input unique code of bought card > input overseas number to actually call) A 40 min call could cost 100 SEK (~$14 counting on the earliest exchange rate I could find, from 2003). Also, these cards "minutes" would often get reduced too quick, especially when the line would be shaky and drop, and you needed to make new call. 100 kr/14 dollars 17 years ago was obviously worth more than they do today, and we're not even talking about transatlantic undersea cable-carried calls!
I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you're looking to make crappy jokes on the interwebs, I can tell you I didn't laugh.... but what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you stop making shitty jokes now, that will be the end of it - I will not look for you, I will not pursue you... but if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you... and I will kill you.
When you think about it, the level to which technology has progressed is nothing short of absolutely insane. The more you learn about it, the more mystifyingly incredibly awe inspiring it all really is. Just think about it. We went from carrying messages written on paper on horseback to today when we could transmit terabytes of information across the globe in an instant. It's completely mental.
Iron Lightning the worst part is we should be further along because some companies milked the market (intel). Image some of the tech we use today cane out in the 70s. We should be further along.
My grandmother passed away in the late 1990s and before she died she commented that probably no one could have seen so much change in their lifetime. The world she was born into was so vastly different to the one she died in. And yet when I consider how fast things have changed over the last 25 years, it seems there's more to come!
@@Scripture-Man There's simply no way to predict where we as humanity might be in the next few decades. Back sometime in the late 1800's the commissioner of the US patent office said that "Everything that can be invented has been invented." That was over a hundred years ago. Obviously, that was famously incorrect. But it just goes to show how impossible it is to predict what kind of advancements we could make.
I honestly had no idea there was a cable across the sea. I thought 100% of internet used satellites. The idea of there being a huge cable going all the way across the Atlantic still seems kind of far-fetched, while the idea of using something so physical seems kind of crude and old-fashioned.
so if im not wrong, if this video was uploaded to a server in the USA. then this video has techically traveled over one of these cables to get to the server in the netherlands right?
@@KuntalGhosh Your English is bad. The original poster asked whether the video travelled from USA to Netherlands over one of the underwater cables. You said there is another way "directly". But now it seems you can neither read nor write English to explain what you mean.
That was fantastic! You've gone from awesome game/pc related vids to full-on tv quality documentaries chap. I daresay I would use this to teach my class about how we transmit data and the truly astounding work that was done to lay the foundations for what we have today. Top work!
Watching this I thought the same, but then it dawned on me: it's even better than TV documentaries, because there's no over-dramatization ("did they get the wire down, let's find out after the break"), no endless repeats of the same thing ("before the break we explained this simple thing, now we explain it again, in case you have forgotten... ah well, let's do another break, then start essentially from the beginning again") and so on... 20 minutes of well delivered (and well illustrated) information with no unnecessary ballast attached to it. Thumbs up to that!
At this moment the company I work for is recovering the TAT1 Cable for recycling, very interesting to hear and see what it did and meant for today's internet connection!
I think the best thing about TAT1 was the flexible repeaters - they are like maybe fifteen little train cars that are waterproof but flexible just like the cable, to go around the drums and cable tanks without any special repeater handling gear. Even the thermionic valves are included, the whole thing is amazing. Please look after those repeaters, there are many people around the world who would love to have one for their cable museums!
Great documentary, a good reminder that our internet is not invisible satellite wave but actual cables, also the technology about cables is more than just a metal string
You do realize that satellite internet is a real thing right? Cable internet just provides faster speeds therefore is used more. Satellite tv is also a real thing. You use a satellite dish that points up to receive the signal.
hankyboy42594 yes I know satellite Internet exists, bus is less common, the majority of computers that are connected to the Internet are broadband wired, also most cellphone communications (3g, 4g etc) are wireless until a the nearest cell phone tower, from there its a landline until the destination
Hi - I worked in BT Submarine Cable R&D for more than 20 years, and I wish that your video had existed as introductory material for our students and other visitors! In working on projects from TAT8 to TAT14 and beyond, I must say that the work was fascinating, with a mix of things large (ships) and small (photons and fibres), and things that never change (waves, rock abrasion, repeater housings) and things changing all the time (components, transmission methods, network topology, industry alliances). Anybody with an 'engineering mind' would certainly find a happy place in one of the companies currently operating in the field! Many people still think of satellites as the 'modern thing' whereas the reality is that for long haul traffic they were out of the picture decades ago. I would be surprised if they even amount to 1% now, though I suppose there will always be islands too small to support the cost of a cable landing even from a branching unit on another cable. Thanks for your video.
I work as an engineer for a few cable systems in Asia and I agree with you on all your points. Very interesting work indeed. Though I wish people would stop fueling the fire on the shark bite topic, considering how rare it is.
I would be ten folds more interested in learning if I were shown how much effort it took to come to this point in technology. They only want us to learn some formulas and do well in test smh.
Right! That engraving of the Pony Express rider looking at them puttin up the telegraph lines should have been in my history textbook. That was a powerful image.
I did not expect to enjoy this history lesson as much as I did... and I have to say that I enjoyed it so much thanks in large part to your enthusiastic writing/narration as well as the choice of musical score. Well done!
Most people don't know or care about undersea cables, in fact most people think the internet and cellphones work through satellites. But in Africa, which is physically detached and far removed from most of the internet's backbone, we actually know and hear about undersea cables, and it makes the news and public conversation. West Africa got the ACE cable a few years ago and it was all the talk of the town, because it meant our terribly slow internet speeds would improve.
Interesting video! Our cable from South Africa to Europe broke and is being repaired. For the past few weeks we had very slow internet access to certain sites. What is interesting is that two sites, one may think is hosted in the same country, may not be equally affected. Great channel!
Great video. I have been in telecom for 25+ years and help turn up TAT-14 in the early 2000's. Your explanations of multiplexing and WDM were straightforward and easy to understand for someone learning what is happening.
20:01 Amazing how miniscule the amount of data traffic is that is carried via satellites. Even the Google earth satellite images come from aircraft, as opposed to satellites.
You forgot the Carrington Event in 1859, where the telegraph system nearly exploded due to a Coronal Mass Ejection from the sun. It was the first time the entire system went down and was usable for several hours around the world. But it was also the first electric system created by and used daily by humans to 'crash' and was 'down' for several hours.
Hi Nostalgia Nerd..... what a wonderful condensation of history in just 22 minutes. This is an awesome material for anyone who wants, or is studying networking (im currently taking a degree in Networking Technologies). Thanks for your video. I will suggest this video to some of my classmates. Keep up with our awesome channel. Greetings from Miami. ;-)
I worked at Bellcore which was split off Bell Labs in 1984, the year I started. Fiber optics was a game changer. Bandwidth was no longer the problem. I worked in a group that developed standards for fiber optic standards. We tested multi-mode, single-mode, different encoding standards, RTZ vs NRTZ for example. Analyzed the combination of synchronous vs. asynchronous signals, and the team I worked in, developed SONET which is the foundation of the big backbones of the Internet. I am proud of my participation in building the future.
I stumbled across the video and it started out with Faraday and the telegraph. It seemed a bit early to start, but you made this the foundation with telegraphs and moved smoothly into fiber optics.
What an awsome video. I never thought about how this undersea lines are still a thing. Take it almost for granted ... Its amazing how far we came in this short time here on earth ...
TheOne Doige I know, I am too. It's just that the guy was trying to make out that Americans pronounce stuff like Astomoner and I just found it odd Or maybe he was implying that the Brits say stuff like that which I know certainly is not true
@@nine182 No, I'm an American. I was implying that brits pronounce those words in a ridiculous manner as a joke. I mean hell, you guys can't pronounce aluminum correctly and god forbid somebody ask you to spell check or tire XD
This autoplayed after some random video I was watching and after a few minutes I was like, "I should subscribe to this." And then noticed it was you who I've been subscribed to for ages. Keep up the good work!
Nice work! It must have taken a long time to make. We appreciate the effort. @18:08 It says that in fiber the signal moves at the speed of light, making communication almost instantaneous. That's true, but the speed of light in glass fiber is only 66% of the speed in vacuum. Still pretty fast, but digital voice uses compression which adds significant delay. If you use two cell phones at the same time, you can hear the delay. Also coaxial cable has a speed of 66% to 89% of the speed of light in vacuum.
These pioneers really took huge risks and came up with amazing yet crazy ideas, who knew the oceans had less deep parts that would allow for laying of cable across the channel
As a kid, I heard from my mom about "The Transatlantic Cable", which I took to mean they just laid down a single cable some time before I was born and that was that. I really enjoyed the history lesson here. Well done! Kind regards from "the continent". 😉 Surf Wisely.
This is fantastic. Best combination of technical explanations in the context of history that I've come across yet. Am stashing it in my teaching arsenal.
I watched this using a fibre optic cable that comes right into my house. Additionally, how cool is it that we can do realtime video chat across the planet, using our mobile phones.
Construction of the overland telegraph (through Alaska and Siberia) was being readied when the completion of the trans Atlantic cable killed it. Poles and wires were simply abandoned. The native people in British Columbia, Canada (on the proposed route) constructed bridges out of these materials. Telegraph creek, British Columbia was named as it was on the right of way, though no telegraph line was built there.
Try asking Chris th-cam.com/channels/HL9bfHTxCMi-7vfxQ-AYtg.html , he uses it for the Journey across Japan series ;) (I'll see if he mentions the title anywhere)
nice.....I worked at BT&D (British Telecom & Dupont) laterly bought by and known as Hewlett Packard ..even laterly known as Agilent Technologies ...it was an R&D and production site were we made some of the first solid state LSC (light source components) used as the early optical fibre transmitters for those fibre bundles . later on I worked in submarine pump laser dept where we made the solid state pump lasers for our erbium doped fiber amplifiers which used light to amplify light for those undersea fibre bundles . Then i moved to the wafer fab where we made lots of interesting stuff including 10gigabit dwdm transmitters and were working on 40gigbit dwdm transmitters . All of this in the early nineties to the early 2000's...most people don't realise how much of the digital age came from a company in Ipswich suffolk England. Then HP moved the production to the singapore and the Ipswich site closed....But most of the top brain power moved to the centre for integrated photonics (still in ipswich) which was bought by Huawei in 2012 ....so a lot of the digital age is still owed to town in suffolk.
And - before your buildings were built, at the same BT site, BT people were making individual transistors for the repeaters of the 1970s and 1980s, and also inventing optical fibre manufacturing processes for the systems that followed.
Sharks are attracted to the magnetic field around a cable, which might interfere with its navigation using the natural magnetic field. Might make it angry enough to bite. A major cable near Canary Isles was taken out by a shark bite, so cables likely to be bitten now have a thin layer of metal foil added which is strong enough to stop a tooth. Problem solved.
whatonearthishappening.com then click the videos tab and start with the Natural Law Seminar. After that, I recommend the podcast series in order from 1 - 217 which are all 3 hours minimally. However, the Natural Law Seminar is the single most important video on the internet. Full friggin stop. The podcasts and other presentations build upon the natural law seminar. Ultimately, it perfectly explains the entire state of humanity world-wide; using plain language, building information in a coherent and linear progression, an providing you knowledge and Truth that is otherwise wholly lost by the ignorant masses of the world.
My actual job (for real) is to draw and design construction drawings for fiber optic cable routes in the mid-west US, be it buried, hung from poles, mounted within tunnels, or hanging off a bridge. Been doing this for 7 years now. Only about a year or so ago did I learn that communications between countries are actually being shared via a fiber optic line straddled across the ocean floor. Kind of blew my mind, not gonna lie. I thought it was all transmitted via satellite.
Honestly as a guitar fan and a hi-fi fan i can finally see transistors as something good thanks to this video! its pretty nice to see "guitar players biggest enemy" finally used for something good! nice! A lil bit of info on this for people who don't know, transistors where used in guitar amps since the mid 80's for amplification, which made a 100W guitar amplifier (normal wattage for a guitar amp) way cheaper but it came with the cost that it didnt have this litle raw edge around a guitar tone, it also didnt go as loud as a Tube amp which made it a big downgrade, for alot of live musicians in jazz, blues, and rock music the tone of a transistor amp wasnt as good as a tube amp which always had a bit of grit on it's tone, however you dialed your tonal knobs (bas mid treble) you always had to look out with the volume knob, by increasing volume your distorted (or overdriven) signal was always apparant which ment that every player had their own sound, imagine dialing in the same tone as me, but lowering your volume a bit lower than me, it sounded completly diffrent. A tube amp has feels more alive than a transistor amp due to this.
Good girl Shark, biting the cable to make sure it holds up! Also, gotta love that one of the ships were named the HMS Agamemnon - could say it was foreshadowing of what to come in history.
Nice refresh on this subject. One thing I would like to add - Even if the amplifiers in the fiber cables run on electricity the amplification is purely done with light/laser energy. A laser is fired in to the fiber using doped glass and the signal is magically refreshed. This makes the amplification almost perfect with no added signal delay or distortion. The amplifiers are spaced in such a pattern that at least one can fail of two in sequence before a repair is needed.
Now old Musky is building low-orbit satellite comms, because light (or radio) waves in air and vacuum go a lot faster than in glass. And they're so much closer than geosynchronous satellites that the latency becomes low enough to compete with (and win over) fiber optic cable.
Thanks for this vid. Being able to lay a transatlantic cable without it vanishing into trenches miles deep and ripping apart on ridges has always puzzled me. I used to work in offshore marine exploration and we were always snagging cables on stuff. Seems the answer was a real stroke of geophysical luck. Cheers
Superb video. I don't know why, but thinking about those old abandoned telegraph cables laying there in dead silence gives me the chills. Spooky, somehow. By the way, there's an extreme retro tech restoration project if I ever saw one.
Unfortunately they are probably in 100 or more pieces now. They weren't well shielded they weren't buried close to shore and they stopped repairing breaks in them over 50 years ago.
Modern practice is to pull up old optical fibre cables when they are no longer economically useful. In many cases they can then be laid somewhere else where the lower performance is still good enough. And pulling up the old cable will release the well-studied cable route for a new cable, which can result in a better-engineered system for a more reliable service - winners all round.
Awesome show, well researched, and super quality. I would like to see a similar production of communication satellites, all the way from telstar to starlink (Elon musk/SpaceX)
A correction: At 1:30(ish) - I mean 1837 rather than 1937.
A further correction: At 0:28 - Faraday invented the first electric motor, not battery. Faraday built on Alessandro Volta's work after creating the Voltaic pile.
ANOTHER correction: At 13:00 This should be 100 for 2,000 miles. Although closer to 200 were needed for the longer distances these cables were span across.
This is my fault for trying to error check at 3am with no coffee. Apologies, and I hope it doesn't infringe on your viewing pleasure too much.
Just left a comment re maths at 13:00 too.
@@JamieCrookesYes!
0:29 - Alessandro Volta invented the first battery, in 1800, not Faraday.
8:55 - You mean Antonio Meucci did that, as acknowledged by the US Government in 2000. Bell outright copyright trolled the Italian.
Never worry about the mistakes mate. The fact that people spot them means your content was interesting enough for people to pay attention to. You've crammed a lot of detail into this video. There's absolutely no shame in getting a few details wrong. It's obviously not through lack of understanding. It's just the verbal equivalent of a typo. I think this is one of your best videos content wise. Made for great viewing whilst eating my chinese takeaway.
Mehh, its only TH-cam, dw. Still a well told story.
Imagine being the guy who fries the first cable that had so much effort and work to lay it.
5:40 "[Mistaken] that electricity flowed like water rather than pulses [as was soon accepted]. British Engineer *WildMan WhiteHouse* tried to _force a higher voltage_ down the line to _force the messages_ through. This just _FRIED the cable_ until it stopped working!"
That early cabling never could have worked especially with an impure core resistance too much like a heating element. But in the history books/vid streams a poor single loley British Engineer really took the fall for frying it. Maybe he should have awaited further opinions but still perhaps a bit unfairly, with it arguably making little difference? At least it finally proved to all that a MUCH more thought out approach in every way was needed!
Continuing the water analogy, _current_ is still used and I've heard China interuses pressure with amperage. ;]
::starts whistling::
::puts hands in pockets::
::slowly walks away::
Uhhmm oops sooorrryyy
@@djosearth3618 Er, *loley*? Is that what they sing in rumba songs? Or is it foley artists running down metallic staircases, as they often seem to do, while listening to samples of bullets ricocheting on thingummies? I'd love to know, to be able to interuse it.
The original IT support disaster.
Huh. I never considered the possibility of losing my internet connection to a shark attack before.
You wouldn't even loose complete connection, it would just be alot slower
Sharknado.
a shark byte
A mega-shark byte
the shark is honestly more likely to break its teeth then manage to get through the cable
Girlfriend in America: Why didn't you call me.
Boyfriend in the UK: A shark cut the line.
Girlfriend: Oh, that's your excuse for everything.
@@sanctumsomega or she's got a wide gash.
Jaws 2020: Just when you thought it was safe to go back online.....
@@Grayvorn "Remember Jaws?"
@@MajorShanks I do, watched the iconic opening scene in English class once too.
@@Grayvorn That was a Mr. Plinkett quote 😄 But I remember it too 👍
To think about, that in 1988 280Mbps was the total capacity between the two continents, and now I have a 500Mbps connection to the world from my home, is.. unreal. It's only 31 years apart. What a time to be alive.
Thanks for this extremely well edited video!
and I just upgraded to 10Gbps for my server...
i know... I really enjoy living these times... but I CAN'T feel happy because I could born like 30, 50, or even 100 years later to see more IMPROVENTS! damn..
5G will soon give everyone 1 Gbps connections --- even in a log cabin in the deep woods !!
How the..
@@lagillas Only if we don't mess up with climate change
Hmm... I'm surprised there hasn't been a James Bond where the villain plots to disconnect the cables underwater and cause global economic disaster. They could have sharks with lasers.
Yes... I would watch this.
laser sharks !
I like it. Would definitely be a better plot than the current diversicult social justice rubbish being rammed into Bond and other action cinema.
Sharks with Freakin laser beams!
James -Bond- Bandwidth
Great now where all on the watchlist.
my great aunt worked for bell labs and the govnt developing sonar for the military back in the day. Its really interesting to see the humble beginings, and the effort and hopefulness of the projects, not to mention the scale. Thank god for those older folk who actually made the world a better place, without concern of recognition.
Tfw you break your brand-new undersea cable almost immediately.
by basically ragrequitting and kicking it to get it to work
Don't give it Linus.
@Rich that feeling when?
@@hunteradcock8023 the floop when
@Rich that fart when
Interesting. In the 1960s we're still having trouble making phone calls across the sea, yet we're landing people on the moon and talking to them.
Radiowaves travelling in straight line, not hindered by the curvature of the earth.
It's easier to shoot up than around "corners."
@referral madness I've heard that fact before. but no. I'm not nearly old enough to remember 16 years before I was born.
@referral madness yes, lots of people that are older 60, 70, and 80 years old that would remember how difficult it was to make international phone calls.
@referral madness Well, within reason, how new and difficult a technology is/was, can be measured by the prices of using them.
I am 27 years old. My parents needed to go to special "phone call centrals" to call their parents (Sweden to Lebanon) when I was a child (I don't remember that), but what I remember is how expensive it was later, when you could buy "call-cards" with a code to type in. (Call operator of card > input unique code of bought card > input overseas number to actually call)
A 40 min call could cost 100 SEK (~$14 counting on the earliest exchange rate I could find, from 2003). Also, these cards "minutes" would often get reduced too quick, especially when the line would be shaky and drop, and you needed to make new call.
100 kr/14 dollars 17 years ago was obviously worth more than they do today, and we're not even talking about transatlantic undersea cable-carried calls!
``How the Internet Crossed the Sea``
It surfed.
I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you're looking to make crappy jokes on the interwebs, I can tell you I didn't laugh.... but what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you stop making shitty jokes now, that will be the end of it - I will not look for you, I will not pursue you... but if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you... and I will kill you.
@@oteletampis7513 stfu
😆🥁🎵
Bruh
@@oteletampis7513 this post is cringier than the joke
When you think about it, the level to which technology has progressed is nothing short of absolutely insane.
The more you learn about it, the more mystifyingly incredibly awe inspiring it all really is.
Just think about it. We went from carrying messages written on paper on horseback to today when we could transmit terabytes of information across the globe in an instant.
It's completely mental.
Iron Lightning the worst part is we should be further along because some companies milked the market (intel). Image some of the tech we use today cane out in the 70s. We should be further along.
@@NovaDoll We would be exponentially more advanced if certain groups didn't retard advancement of knowledge such as religions and governments.
and the rate of invention is continuously accelerating
My grandmother passed away in the late 1990s and before she died she commented that probably no one could have seen so much change in their lifetime. The world she was born into was so vastly different to the one she died in. And yet when I consider how fast things have changed over the last 25 years, it seems there's more to come!
@@Scripture-Man There's simply no way to predict where we as humanity might be in the next few decades.
Back sometime in the late 1800's the commissioner of the US patent office said that "Everything that can be invented has been invented."
That was over a hundred years ago.
Obviously, that was famously incorrect. But it just goes to show how impossible it is to predict what kind of advancements we could make.
It's amazing how many people today think their cell phones and home internet connections communicate via satellites. It's nearly all terrestrial.
I suppose people are getting confused between an internet input and GPS.
Exactly this. When people think internet connection, they think that they are being connected to fucking outer space
I honestly had no idea there was a cable across the sea. I thought 100% of internet used satellites. The idea of there being a huge cable going all the way across the Atlantic still seems kind of far-fetched, while the idea of using something so physical seems kind of crude and old-fashioned.
@@Scripture-Man I don't really know but I think it's possible to say most of the internet is underwater.
Well they don’t exactly tell anyone.
"Unplug the PC honey, I need to call my mum!"
yeeeee bruv that was exactly how it was my guy bloody hell man :)
really bro, no one cares, if you understand the joke..
*sniff* im smellin a lot o nostalgia 'ere you got a loicense for that eh?
"this was the age of steam and so such technology was miraculous and useful" could be said in the 1800's and the 2010's
"miraculous" is a completely relative term.
so if im not wrong, if this video was uploaded to a server in the USA. then this video has techically traveled over one of these cables to get to the server in the netherlands right?
yes
@@KuntalGhosh Probably not
@@KuntalGhosh What cable (or other medium) does "directly" travel over?
@@KuntalGhosh But that is the same as what the original poster said. You said there was another way "directly".
@@KuntalGhosh Your English is bad. The original poster asked whether the video travelled from USA to Netherlands over one of the underwater cables. You said there is another way "directly". But now it seems you can neither read nor write English to explain what you mean.
That was fantastic! You've gone from awesome game/pc related vids to full-on tv quality documentaries chap. I daresay I would use this to teach my class about how we transmit data and the truly astounding work that was done to lay the foundations for what we have today. Top work!
Watching this I thought the same, but then it dawned on me: it's even better than TV documentaries, because there's no over-dramatization ("did they get the wire down, let's find out after the break"), no endless repeats of the same thing ("before the break we explained this simple thing, now we explain it again, in case you have forgotten... ah well, let's do another break, then start essentially from the beginning again") and so on...
20 minutes of well delivered (and well illustrated) information with no unnecessary ballast attached to it. Thumbs up to that!
@@jk9554 👍👍👍
👍👍👍👍
It was actually on TV, I think BBC 4. That had acting, not just pics.
I loved the genuine historical footage and illustrations, as well as the CG embellishments of such.
At this moment the company I work for is recovering the TAT1 Cable for recycling, very interesting to hear and see what it did and meant for today's internet connection!
I think the best thing about TAT1 was the flexible repeaters - they are like maybe fifteen little train cars that are waterproof but flexible just like the cable, to go around the drums and cable tanks without any special repeater handling gear. Even the thermionic valves are included, the whole thing is amazing. Please look after those repeaters, there are many people around the world who would love to have one for their cable museums!
Holy freaking shit!
Can I see it somewhere, do you guys upload videos of your work somewhere?
14:00 So TAT1 was the one or the one after when the used 2 physical cabling, one for each direction?
That's actually a pretty cool job considering that your name is Onderwater.....
@@djosearth3618 Yes TAT1 was two cables in the sea (but one cable where it crossed Newfoundland).
Great documentary, a good reminder that our internet is not invisible satellite wave but actual cables, also the technology about cables is more than just a metal string
You might say it's a series of tubes.
Reminds me of people who think cloud storage is actually in the cloud
You do realize that satellite internet is a real thing right? Cable internet just provides faster speeds therefore is used more. Satellite tv is also a real thing. You use a satellite dish that points up to receive the signal.
Rawler94 flat earther spotted
hankyboy42594 yes I know satellite Internet exists, bus is less common, the majority of computers that are connected to the Internet are broadband wired, also most cellphone communications (3g, 4g etc) are wireless until a the nearest cell phone tower, from there its a landline until the destination
i don't know how to cope with the fact the internet is carried out on multicolour shark proof lazer cables
Honestly I can't imagine how else it would be done
@@Leo9ine Bluetooth
@The Intermediate Gamer honestly I agree, don't know why I posted this, maybe it was funny to me at the time
@@Lanurus was you just dropped on the head 🙃
@@jaybiedayy3347 yes
Hi - I worked in BT Submarine Cable R&D for more than 20 years, and I wish that your video had existed as introductory material for our students and other visitors! In working on projects from TAT8 to TAT14 and beyond, I must say that the work was fascinating, with a mix of things large (ships) and small (photons and fibres), and things that never change (waves, rock abrasion, repeater housings) and things changing all the time (components, transmission methods, network topology, industry alliances). Anybody with an 'engineering mind' would certainly find a happy place in one of the companies currently operating in the field!
Many people still think of satellites as the 'modern thing' whereas the reality is that for long haul traffic they were out of the picture decades ago. I would be surprised if they even amount to 1% now, though I suppose there will always be islands too small to support the cost of a cable landing even from a branching unit on another cable.
Thanks for your video.
I work as an engineer for a few cable systems in Asia and I agree with you on all your points. Very interesting work indeed. Though I wish people would stop fueling the fire on the shark bite topic, considering how rare it is.
@@75190255508 Well, we can't help it. The sheer 'randomness' is some part of a humor code. I bet you found it funny when you first heard about it.
It's a pity that such great content doesn't have a proper audience, while some BS has millions of views. Keep up the good work!
Excuse me, is 400.000 a small amount?
@@DmitryChmelyov it isn't but is it big compared to multimillion subs/views of some prankster or let's player?
Unsub to Pewdiepie!
Are you English?
@@lateral1385 Tajik!
How do we never hear about this? I didn't even know these existed until I was out of school.
I would be ten folds more interested in learning if I were shown how much effort it took to come to this point in technology. They only want us to learn some formulas and do well in test smh.
Right! That engraving of the Pony Express rider looking at them puttin up the telegraph lines should have been in my history textbook. That was a powerful image.
Seems like someone never picked up a book
Don’t let schooling interfere with your education.
School keeps you dumb
I did not expect to enjoy this history lesson as much as I did... and I have to say that I enjoyed it so much thanks in large part to your enthusiastic writing/narration as well as the choice of musical score. Well done!
Most people don't know or care about undersea cables, in fact most people think the internet and cellphones work through satellites. But in Africa, which is physically detached and far removed from most of the internet's backbone, we actually know and hear about undersea cables, and it makes the news and public conversation. West Africa got the ACE cable a few years ago and it was all the talk of the town, because it meant our terribly slow internet speeds would improve.
I couldn't have watched this without those pioneers that laid down the first transatlantic cables
So theres literally a fricking cable under the ocean that allows me to connect to the world
Wild
It's so interesting to see how these modern cables are truly an engineering feat.
World Wild Web
Yeah no foolin, til I saw this video I was under the impression it was somehow beamed wirelessly across the ocean
A lot more than one cable these days.
@@Fritzafella same
Genuinely one of the best things, I've watched on TH-cam for a long time. Please make more videos like this
Why did you add a comma after the word things? That's grammatically retarded, unless it was a typographical error.
You just got a subscriber. Top quality editorial work. This is not professionalism, this is enthusiasm in its purest form.
Interesting video! Our cable from South Africa to Europe broke and is being repaired. For the past few weeks we had very slow internet access to certain sites. What is interesting is that two sites, one may think is hosted in the same country, may not be equally affected. Great channel!
Great video. I have been in telecom for 25+ years and help turn up TAT-14 in the early 2000's. Your explanations of multiplexing and WDM were straightforward and easy to understand for someone learning what is happening.
20:01 Amazing how miniscule the amount of data traffic is that is carried via satellites. Even the Google earth satellite images come from aircraft, as opposed to satellites.
Thanks for this great documentary. I loved it!
Thank you, man!
This was fascinating and a joy to watch.
You forgot the Carrington Event in 1859, where the telegraph system nearly exploded due to a Coronal Mass Ejection from the sun. It was the first time the entire system went down and was usable for several hours around the world. But it was also the first electric system created by and used daily by humans to 'crash' and was 'down' for several hours.
Hi Nostalgia Nerd..... what a wonderful condensation of history in just 22 minutes. This is an awesome material for anyone who wants, or is studying networking (im currently taking a degree in Networking Technologies). Thanks for your video. I will suggest this video to some of my classmates. Keep up with our awesome channel. Greetings from Miami. ;-)
I worked at Bellcore which was split off Bell Labs in 1984, the year I started. Fiber optics was a game changer. Bandwidth was no longer the problem. I worked in a group that developed standards for fiber optic standards. We tested multi-mode, single-mode, different encoding standards, RTZ vs NRTZ for example. Analyzed the combination of synchronous vs. asynchronous signals, and the team I worked in, developed SONET which is the foundation of the big backbones of the Internet.
I am proud of my participation in building the future.
I would love to hear all about the numbers missing from the G.651, 652, 653 etc series!
This was amazing. Watching this from the USA may not have been possible without those pioneers of technology!
This is the best video I have found on the subject. Thanks so much !
I stumbled across the video and it started out with Faraday and the telegraph. It seemed a bit early to start, but you made this the foundation with telegraphs and moved smoothly into fiber optics.
What an awsome video. I never thought about how this undersea lines are still a thing. Take it almost for granted ...
Its amazing how far we came in this short time here on earth ...
3:05, did you say 'astromoner'?
That's how it's pronounced across the pond. Astromoner, Nucular, Exscape, Ecspecially. Ek cetera.
Sigma I've never heard an American say it like that before.
@@nine182 The dudes a Brit.
TheOne Doige I know, I am too. It's just that the guy was trying to make out that Americans pronounce stuff like Astomoner and I just found it odd
Or maybe he was implying that the Brits say stuff like that which I know certainly is not true
@@nine182
No, I'm an American. I was implying that brits pronounce those words in a ridiculous manner as a joke.
I mean hell, you guys can't pronounce aluminum correctly and god forbid somebody ask you to spell check or tire XD
This is great as a telecom tech / computer tech I really appreciate this documentary thank you!
That was genuinely a great video and a subject I didn't think I had any interest in, but apparently did.
If you look at the map of shipping lanes from the 1600-1800s and a map of undersea cables now you can see a huge similarity.
One of the most amazing video I've ever seen on TH-cam! Thank you for such unique content!
That's a lot of stuff I didn't know I wanted to know but ended up wanting to know. Thanks!
Could you please outline all the names of the songtracks you used on the background, if it's not too much to ask?
Apparently it was
would also love to know it
This autoplayed after some random video I was watching and after a few minutes I was like, "I should subscribe to this." And then noticed it was you who I've been subscribed to for ages.
Keep up the good work!
Nice work! It must have taken a long time to make. We appreciate the effort.
@18:08 It says that in fiber the signal moves at the speed of light, making communication almost instantaneous. That's true, but the speed of light in glass fiber is only 66% of the speed in vacuum. Still pretty fast, but digital voice uses compression which adds significant delay. If you use two cell phones at the same time, you can hear the delay. Also coaxial cable has a speed of 66% to 89% of the speed of light in vacuum.
A great insight into the early communications between the UK and America. Very enjoyable.
These pioneers really took huge risks and came up with amazing yet crazy ideas, who knew the oceans had less deep parts that would allow for laying of cable across the channel
As a kid, I heard from my mom about "The Transatlantic Cable", which I took to mean they just laid down a single cable some time before I was born and that was that.
I really enjoyed the history lesson here. Well done! Kind regards from "the continent". 😉
Surf Wisely.
Great editing, content, music and entertainment. Thank you!
What is this background music at 8:01 ??
very well documented and put together worthy of being shown in a history class very good job on the sources and editing my friend
Love the TVOntario Bits and Bytes shout-out. Great show.
This is one of the best videos I've seen this year.
YoSoyÉpico sorry
More documentaries! You're amazing at making these
This is fantastic. Best combination of technical explanations in the context of history that I've come across yet. Am stashing it in my teaching arsenal.
Hey. I've never seen any of your videwos before, but that was really well thought out and put together. Thank you for the 22 minutes well spent.
I watched this using a fibre optic cable that comes right into my house.
Additionally, how cool is it that we can do realtime video chat across the planet, using our mobile phones.
at least in lisbon with NOS mobile companie...the 3g is so bad that u cant
Absolutely incredible how we've got to where we are today. If only those guys from the 1800's could see what their vision has become.
Loved this. Great vid my man.
Amazing! Finding the 2000 mile trench without sonar, or satellite navigation is a huge task in itself!
Construction of the overland telegraph (through Alaska and Siberia) was being readied when the completion of the trans Atlantic cable killed it. Poles and wires were simply abandoned. The native people in British Columbia, Canada (on the proposed route) constructed bridges out of these materials. Telegraph creek, British Columbia was named as it was on the right of way, though no telegraph line was built there.
Song name for the mobile segment starting around 15:38?
Try asking Chris th-cam.com/channels/HL9bfHTxCMi-7vfxQ-AYtg.html , he uses it for the Journey across Japan series ;) (I'll see if he mentions the title anywhere)
@@BuzzinsPetRock78 I was just thinking I had heard it before
I kept falling into thinking I was watching some documentary on discovery channel. Such well made video, much wow.
This was a really interesting watch despite knowing most of the history. Well put together and entertaining!
This is so well put together, and nothing like I expected
excellent content. Very well narrated. Thanks.
What's the song at 7:57 ?
EDIT: "in the deepest of woods" Howard harper Barnes
Nice edit! Rare to see people answer their own question publically. Impressive and useful. probably.
I wonder if any of them back then had any idea their project would one day be used for sharing porn worldwide
@_KomodoDragon The bare ankle pictures are free, but the knee pictures you will need your credit card for.
@@userdetails1 Don't even mention the elbow pictures.
Considering boats traveling oceans were full of lonely men and thus full of some kind of porn material im sure they did.
They could have only dreamed ;]
Personally I'm off porn over 12 years and never happier very few relapses too! ;]
@@djosearth3618 ah so you found a special other
This video is truly amazing! Loved it! :D
nice.....I worked at BT&D (British Telecom & Dupont) laterly bought by and known as Hewlett Packard ..even laterly known as Agilent Technologies ...it was an R&D and production site were we made some of the first solid state LSC (light source components) used as the early optical fibre transmitters for those fibre bundles .
later on I worked in submarine pump laser dept where we made the solid state pump lasers for our erbium doped fiber amplifiers which used light to amplify light for those undersea fibre bundles .
Then i moved to the wafer fab where we made lots of interesting stuff including 10gigabit dwdm transmitters and were working on 40gigbit dwdm transmitters .
All of this in the early nineties to the early 2000's...most people don't realise how much of the digital age came from a company in Ipswich suffolk England.
Then HP moved the production to the singapore and the Ipswich site closed....But most of the top brain power moved to the centre for integrated photonics (still in ipswich) which was bought by Huawei in 2012 ....so a lot of the digital age is still owed to town in suffolk.
And - before your buildings were built, at the same BT site, BT people were making individual transistors for the repeaters of the 1970s and 1980s, and also inventing optical fibre manufacturing processes for the systems that followed.
Great video! Surprisingly interesting!
A wonderful historical presentation, I thoroughly enjoyed it!
with at least a couple of HUGE historical mistake: Volta for the battery and Meucci for the telegraph. not that tief of bell.
You hinted at the shark earlier and I thought it was just a goofy thing to say. Then you showed one doing it. That's brilliant.
Sharks are attracted to the magnetic field around a cable, which might interfere with its navigation using the natural magnetic field. Might make it angry enough to bite. A major cable near Canary Isles was taken out by a shark bite, so cables likely to be bitten now have a thin layer of metal foil added which is strong enough to stop a tooth. Problem solved.
Okay, I NEED to see more documentaries like this!
triumph of the nerds
whatonearthishappening.com then click the videos tab and start with the Natural Law Seminar. After that, I recommend the podcast series in order from 1 - 217 which are all 3 hours minimally. However, the Natural Law Seminar is the single most important video on the internet. Full friggin stop. The podcasts and other presentations build upon the natural law seminar. Ultimately, it perfectly explains the entire state of humanity world-wide; using plain language, building information in a coherent and linear progression, an providing you knowledge and Truth that is otherwise wholly lost by the ignorant masses of the world.
@@davidchapman3375 doubt
My actual job (for real) is to draw and design construction drawings for fiber optic cable routes in the mid-west US, be it buried, hung from poles, mounted within tunnels, or hanging off a bridge. Been doing this for 7 years now. Only about a year or so ago did I learn that communications between countries are actually being shared via a fiber optic line straddled across the ocean floor. Kind of blew my mind, not gonna lie. I thought it was all transmitted via satellite.
Honestly as a guitar fan and a hi-fi fan i can finally see transistors as something good thanks to this video! its pretty nice to see "guitar players biggest enemy" finally used for something good! nice!
A lil bit of info on this for people who don't know, transistors where used in guitar amps since the mid 80's for amplification, which made a 100W guitar amplifier (normal wattage for a guitar amp) way cheaper but it came with the cost that it didnt have this litle raw edge around a guitar tone, it also didnt go as loud as a Tube amp which made it a big downgrade, for alot of live musicians in jazz, blues, and rock music the tone of a transistor amp wasnt as good as a tube amp which always had a bit of grit on it's tone, however you dialed your tonal knobs (bas mid treble) you always had to look out with the volume knob, by increasing volume your distorted (or overdriven) signal was always apparant which ment that every player had their own sound, imagine dialing in the same tone as me, but lowering your volume a bit lower than me, it sounded completly diffrent. A tube amp has feels more alive than a transistor amp due to this.
What an awesome and interesting video! I'll be expecting to see this on trending some time soon. Great Job!
Nice work, sir..
Have you been to the telegraph museum in Porthcurno? It was the first thing that came to mind as the video started to play...
Good girl Shark, biting the cable to make sure it holds up!
Also, gotta love that one of the ships were named the HMS Agamemnon - could say it was foreshadowing of what to come in history.
What about Agamemnon?
Yeah how did the illiad foreshadow modern life. Its gone over my head
Btw that shark was around 20:30
I didn't get the Agamemnon reference either despite just learning it's related to the Illiad
Nice refresh on this subject. One thing I would like to add - Even if the amplifiers in the fiber cables run on electricity the amplification is purely done with light/laser energy. A laser is fired in to the fiber using doped glass and the signal is magically refreshed. This makes the amplification almost perfect with no added signal delay or distortion. The amplifiers are spaced in such a pattern that at least one can fail of two in sequence before a repair is needed.
Now old Musky is building low-orbit satellite comms, because light (or radio) waves in air and vacuum go a lot faster than in glass. And they're so much closer than geosynchronous satellites that the latency becomes low enough to compete with (and win over) fiber optic cable.
New subscriber. This is like a PBS-quality documentary.
Great documentary! What's that song playing at 19:00 ? It's awesome
It's the main theme of the 80's
Fun fact...Modem stands for "modulator demodulator"
Another fun fact is you forget your period.
@@weatherphobia is he pregnant?
@@weatherphobia What are we naming the baby??
@@KaiserMattTygore927 Dorothy, or Dot for friends and family.
i'm sure nobody watching this retro hardware channel knew that
Fantastic video! Thanks
This video needs to be used as an educational piece world over!
Brilliant! Thanks for the time & effort you obviously put into this. :-)
this is like your magnum opus of work man, good job!
Did you mean 1837 at around 1:30 ?
YES. GOD DAMN MY LOVE OF THE 20th CENTURY
@@Nostalgianerd Hehehehe XD
I caught that, stopped watching and unsubscribed. Preposterous!
No, 1937. That is when they started telegraphing the Germans over Czechoslovakia.
Thanks for this vid. Being able to lay a transatlantic cable without it vanishing into trenches miles deep and ripping apart on ridges has always puzzled me. I used to work in offshore marine exploration and we were always snagging cables on stuff. Seems the answer was a real stroke of geophysical luck. Cheers
Great video ! Loved it
Very interesting video, I really enjoyed it, especially since it leads directly to the good ol' days of dial up Internet connections.
Superb video. I don't know why, but thinking about those old abandoned telegraph cables laying there in dead silence gives me the chills. Spooky, somehow.
By the way, there's an extreme retro tech restoration project if I ever saw one.
Unfortunately they are probably in 100 or more pieces now. They weren't well shielded they weren't buried close to shore and they stopped repairing breaks in them over 50 years ago.
Modern practice is to pull up old optical fibre cables when they are no longer economically useful. In many cases they can then be laid somewhere else where the lower performance is still good enough. And pulling up the old cable will release the well-studied cable route for a new cable, which can result in a better-engineered system for a more reliable service - winners all round.
Awesome show, well researched, and super quality. I would like to see a similar production of communication satellites, all the way from telstar to starlink (Elon musk/SpaceX)
I had no idea the first trans atlantic cable was ran in 1866, that's pretty mind blowing technology for that time.
One of the best videos I've watched in a while