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KONRAD ZUSE (1910-1995)
1935-1938: Konrad Zuse builds Z1, world’s first program-controlled computer. Despite certain mechanical engineering problems it had all the basic ingredients of modern machines, using the binary system and today’s standard separation of storage and control. Zuse’s 1936 patent application (Z23139/GMD Nr. 005/021) also suggests a von Neumann architecture (re-invented in 1945) with program and data modifiable in storage.
1941: Zuse completes Z3, world’s first fully functional programmable computer.
1945: Zuse describes Plankalkuel, world’s first higher-level programming language, containing many standard features of today’s programming languages. FORTRAN came almost a decade later. Zuse also used Plankalkuel to design world’s first chess program.
1946: Zuse founds world’s first computer startup company: the Zuse-Ingenieurbüro Hopferau. Venture capital raised through ETH Zürich and an IBM option on Zuse’s patents.

The photo shows Konrad Zuse in the mid 80s with employees of the software company InterFace Connection GmbH (now Interface AG). (Photo Source)

Submarine cable repair

History of the Atlantic Cable & Undersea Communications from the first submarine cable of 1850 to the worldwide fiber optic network

This morning I read an impressive article by Alfonso Desiderio about the 2012 Submarine Cable Map of the world. For Desiderio this is a good way to remind us that the internet seems ‘incorporeal’ but actually it is based on a very huge physical structure.

I’ve collected eight maps to show the development of the submarine cable network. I picked the first 4 images from the History of the Atlantic Cable & Undersea Communications’ site.

1 1855 Map; showing the telegraph lines in operation, under contract, and contemplated, to complete the circuit of the globe / entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1855 by J.H. Colton & Co. in the Clerks Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York.

2 1903 Map: Telegraph Construction & Maintenance Co Ltd Showing submarine telegraph cables the cores of which were manufactured at The Gutta Percha Works, Wharf Road, City Road, London N.

3 1924: This chart represents the world’s international cable network in 1924. It was compiled from the official data of the International Telegraph Bureau, Berne, Switzerland.

4 1992 British Telecomm map of Communications - Around the World

And I found the second four maps on the TeleGeography’s web site.

5 Submarine Cable Map 2000

6 Submarine cable map 2004

9 Submarine cable map 2008

8 Submarine Cable Map 2010

TeleGeography offered also an interactive website called Submarine cable map. Data contained in this map is drawn from Global Bandwidth Research Service and is updated on a regular basis.

I begin to ask myself how many meters are needed to post this message…

Arrival in New York of the first direct cable from the United States to southern Europe. It runs from New York to the Azores and thence will be extended to Rome by way of Malaga, Spain. The system thus completed provides facilities for cheaper and speedier communication with the south of Europe.

The cable is laid on the ocean bed in a direct line from Rockaway Beach, where the Western Union cable station is situated, to Horta on the island of Fayal in the Azores, a distance of 2360 sea miles from Horta to the coast of Italy. The cable line will be completed by La Compagnia Italiana del Cavi Telegrafici Sotto-Marini, of Italy. This part will be in two sections; the first from Horta to Malaga on the southern coast of Spain, a distance of 1340 miles and the second section from Malaga to Anzio, in Italy, a distance of 997 miles. The total length of the new line will be 4704 sea miles or about equal to 5422 land miles.

Pieter Hugo. Permanent Error, 2011

For the past year Hugo has been photographing the people and landscape of an expansive dump of obsolete technology in Ghana. The area, on the outskirts of a slum known as Agbogbloshie, is referred to by local inhabitants as Sodom and Gomorrah, a vivid acknowledgment of the profound inhumanity of the place. When Hugo asked the inhabitants what they called the pit where the burning takes place, they repeatedly responded: ‘For this place, we have no name’.

Their response is a reminder of the alien circumstances that are imposed on marginal communities of the world by the West’s obsession with consumption and obsolesce. This wasteland, where people and cattle live on mountains of motherboards, monitors and discarded hard drives, is far removed from the benefits accorded by the unrelenting advances of technology.

The UN Environment Program has stated that Western countries produce around 50 million tons of digital waste every year. In Europe, only 25 percent of this type of waste is collected and effectively recycled. Much of the rest is piled in containers and shipped to developing countries, supposedly to reduce the digital divide, to create jobs and help people. In reality, the inhabitants of dumps like Agbogbloshie survive largely by burning the electronic devices to extract copper and other metals out of the plastic used in their manufacture. The electronic waste contaminates rivers and lagoons with consequences that are easily imaginable. In 2008 Green Peace took samples of the burnt soil in Agbogbloshie and found high concentrations of lead, mercury, thallium, hydrogen cyanide and PVC.

Notions of time and progress are collapsed in these photographs. There are elements in the images that fast-forward us to an apocalyptic end of the world as we know it, yet the alchemy on this site and the strolling cows recall a pastoral existence that rewinds our minds to a medieval setting. The cycles of history and the lifespan of our technology are both clearly apparent in this cemetery of artifacts from the industrialised world. We are also reminded of the fragility of the information and stories that were stored in the computers which are now just black smoke and melted plastic.

picturethisdate:

On December 18, 1958, Project SCORE, the world’s first communications satellite, launched.

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On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1. It’s hard to imagine in the age of satellites, but this was the first manmade object to leave our atmosphere. Sputnik stayed in orbit for three months before burning up upon reentry to the atmosphere. The above is a replica.