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Undersea Cables Connect the Global Internet
The internet is a series of tubes. In the ocean.
For the internet to be the truly global service that it is, many of these wires—most of them no thicker than a garden hose—are sunk full fathom five across the bottom of the ocean, where they lay alarmingly vulnerable to fishing nets, ship anchors, currents, shark bites, scuba divers with saws, earthquakes, and, of course, volcanoes. It would be the invention, a few years later, of the mirror galvanometer by Whitehouse’s more brilliant workplace nemesis, William Thomson, that allowed for the much more precise articulation of electrical pulses that finally put Europe and the U.S. into regular real-time conversation. Following the granular details of the surveys that Orange Marine’s bathymetry vessels would have taken months before, the Rene Descarteswill chug forward at about 9 miles per hour, sometimes more quickly if the cable is running down an underwater incline, sometimes more slowly if up an ascent.
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