[HN Gopher] Telegram for America (1956) [video]
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Telegram for America (1956) [video]
Author : eigenvalue
Score : 28 points
Date : 2024-03-03 03:07 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (archive.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (archive.org)
| eigenvalue wrote:
| This promotional film made for Western Union shows some very cool
| "high tech" equipment from before the computer age. The machines
| for automatically transmitting and decoding telegrams, the
| desktop "fax" machine for a business executive, and in
| particular, this very impressive automatic "store and forward"
| switching machine:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_55-A
|
| This last one presaged many ideas which later appeared in the
| design for the Arpanet, and the analysis of queuing delays with
| the system was part of the Phd dissertation by Len Kleinrock, who
| helped come up with many of the ideas that contributed to the
| invention of the internet.
|
| It seems like these earlier systems are not really talked about
| much anymore since they quickly became obsolete as a result of
| digital computers, but it's fascinating to think about what they
| could have evolved into had the transistor never been invented.
| bombcar wrote:
| The one of those I love the best is analog firing computers.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_I_Fire_Control_Computer
| eigenvalue wrote:
| Yes, these are awesome. There is another one of these old
| films about them which is a great explainer:
|
| https://youtu.be/s1i-dnAH9Y4
| Animats wrote:
| Message switching did evolve. The next step for Western Union
| was InfoMaster, using RCA mainframe computers in New York,
| Chicago, Atlanta, and San Francisco. There was a Western Union
| international gateway in Mawah, NJ, with UNIVAC mainframe
| computers.
|
| The best known successor to Plan-55A was Sendmail, which is a
| store and forward message switch for email. It serves the same
| basic function, forwarding entire messages as a unit from
| station to station until they reach the delivery point.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Lol I read the headline and I thought of the app. So weird
| because I am actually a ham radio operator and I have done morse
| in the past. I still do ham but I never enjoyed morse, I do a lot
| of digital now. I was just learning it to get the more capable
| license but then the requirement ended up dropped anyway.
|
| It's funny how a mindset can change so quickly and terms can
| change their meaning completely.
|
| But 1956 is a bit weird of a date for telegrams, as it was
| invented way before that.
|
| I'll watch it later because it sounds interesting.
| wanderingstan wrote:
| You have to guess that some of the people at the time saw that
| this film was also a prophecy of the end of telegrams:
| telephones, television, and movies existed and were improving
| year by year. The film itself is an example of a medium that
| would displace telegrams.
|
| The video promotes how important the telegraph was to sports fans
| by showing summer clips from football and baseball followed by
| shots of the Telegraph operators; but of course sports fans would
| rather watch than read a telegram!
|
| I wonder if this film was produced precisely as a "we're still
| relevant!" PR strategy?
| xeromal wrote:
| How cool is that telegram receiving car!
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