Tag Archives: telecommunications

Apr 29 2024
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Daily Post, Urban scene

The old cable sign

Sunday 28th April 2024, 11.40am (day 4,630)

Old cable sign, 28/4/24

Telecommunications is why I have been coming to St Helena these last few years. To the left of this sign, down in the valley of Rupert’s Bay, the Equiano undersea cable now makes landfall on this little island in the middle of the South Atlantic. But it’s not like this is the first time ever that St Helena has been connected to the global network. This sign was made to be visible to ships approaching Jamestown and while I’m not sure about the exact missing words it’s basically a warning not to land or drop anchor east of this point because of the old telegraph cable that also made landfall at Rupert’s. When the Boer War broke out in 1899, within six weeks this cable was laid to connect the island to Cape Town. This compares highly favourably with the (at least) seven years that it took from the original application for the Equiano funding, to its half-hearted activation in October last year — giving the truth to the joke (made by an MP in Westminster in 1994, though he might have been quoting) that ‘The big tragedy of St Helena is that no one wants to invade it: if they did I am sure that overnight there would be much better ways of communicating with it’. And doubtless he was right.

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Mar 08 2023
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Daily Post, Landscape

Porthcurno’s important beach

Wednesday 8th March 2023, 1.20pm (day 4,213)

Porthcurno Beach, 8/3/23

I said yesterday that Penzance, or more generally this part of the world, has not always been peripheral. On this beach at the tip of Britain, the main trans-Atlantic and international telegraph and, later, telephone cables came on shore, from 1870 onwards. That fact explains why I am here — thanks to the Cable & Wireless training centre (for telegraph operators) being built around this vital connection in the country’s communications network, buildings that nowadays house the archive that I have come down to Cornwall to consult.

Either way, Porthcurno has a damn fine beach, one that you would never know was such a strategically important spot. This is the southernmost shot I’ve yet taken in England, and as there is only a tiny portion of the country further south than here (just the Lizard peninsula), this sets a record that I may never beat.

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Oct 20 2020
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Daily Post, Hebden Bridge, Urban scene

Royd Terrace stays in touch

Monday 19th October 2020, 11.50am (day 3,343)

Satellite dishes, 19/10/20

Whether or not Authority spasms and throws out arbitrary diktats in the next few weeks will not change the fact that I have plenty of work to do, and opportunities to get out of Hebden Bridge are going to be limited. So, Johnson, Our Glorious Leader, do your worst, I don’t care any more. Expect more photos of the local area. I don’t know why I focused on this run of satellite dishes on the street of Royd Terrace this morning — possibilities range from a ‘staying in touch’ metaphor, up to and including the decline of civilisation itself. Perhaps.

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Jan 02 2018
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Daily Post, Hebden Bridge, Urban scene

Necessary telecoms

Tuesday 2nd January 2018, 2.25pm (day 2,322)

Telegraph pole, 2/1/18

Mildly aggrieved at having to go back to work today, but I reflected on the fact that without this kind of infrastructure, I’d have had to yomp into Manchester and back today, as indeed I would every other weekday. It’s therefore as good a subject as anything else to epitomise the day. Was it Rimmer from Red Dwarf who had a photo collection of late 20th-century telegraph poles?

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