Can you imagine a world without the Internet?
Yes and it was marvellous.
Welcome to Map Men.
We're the men.
And here's the map.
♫ Map Men, Map Men
♫ Map Map Map Men Men.
Although most of us use the Internet at least every other day,
nobody understands how it works.
All we know is that it's very big, very clever, very important
and impossible to show on a map.
Then why are we doing an episode about it?
Because I was lying. Take a look at this map.
It shows all the undersea cables that connect the world's computers.
And looking at this map reveals a surprising amount
about how the modern world works.
Whilst we can't wait to show you all the weirdest and wonderfullest bits of this exciting chart,
before the geography lesson
we need to put the globes that fell off the wall back on the wall
and then give you a quick history lesson.
For the vast majority of human history
a message could only travel as fast as a human
meaning it was normal to wait days or even months
to receive a very important message.
Very slightly faster methods did exist.
Smoke signals, water clocks, beacons, flags.
But these only worked for predetermined messages.
If you wanted to send a completely original thought
such as "Thursday my dungarees fish basket holibobs"
That was impossible. Until...
In 17-1777, a French chap called Claude Chappe
invented a way to send long distance messages
using an alphabet made up of symbols that could be seen from a very long way away.
On a hilltop, one person operated a machine that could rotate the position of two large sticks.
And on another hilltop, a second person would copy the shape
relaying it onto the next hill
and so on and so on until it was finally decoded at the other end.
Chappe called his system the “telegraph”
From the French "télégraphe"
From the Greek "télégraphe".
It was now possible to send a message from Paris to Lille
in just 12 minutes rather than the usual 12 hours.
(Sacré bleu!)
At its peak, the French Telegraph Network looked like this.
This is the earliest example of a physical network
built to transmit information at high speeds across long distances.
It was the beginning of the internet.
So why aren't we still using mechanical telegraphs today?
Bad question.
The flaws were obvious.
It only worked in the daytime
it only worked in good weather
and it required lots of highly trained workers
who were vulnerable to mistakes and bribery.
Thankfully long distance messaging took a necessary huge leap forward in the 1830s
when a pair of British inventors had a much better idea:
The electric Telegraph.
The electric Telegraph sent pulses of electricity across copper wires
that could be stretched pretty much any distance.
It was the beginning of the Internet.
A contraption like this
which, by the way, would be an awesome clue in an escape room
was used to convert these electric pulses into almost every letter of the alphabet.
And then a very clever man called Samuel Morse
named after Morse Code
invented an easy to learn alphabet made up of [BEEP] and [BEEEEEEP].
Morse Code was a massive improvement.
It only needed two wires instead of six
You could finally send messages quickly
And you could finally spell "quickly".
Morse Code became a vital tool for the military, government, railways, journalism and big business.
(Morse code beeping)
But if Morse Code was going to achieve the absolute
world domination it was surely destined for
one final hurdle had to be overcome:
The Wet Susan.
The most significant advance in Telegraph technology came in 1850
when the aptly named 'English Channel Submarine Telegraph Company'
Boring.
nervously laid the first cable under the sea
desperately hoping they wouldn't electrocute all the fish.
To the relief of haddock everywhere, it worked.
The world's first submarine telegraph in the English Channel
successfully allowed communication across the sea between two countries
It was the beginning of the Internet.
By the mid-19th Century, two enormous networks had grown
in Europe and America.
The next logical step was to connect these two networks together
But the Atlantic Ocean was very very very very
very very very very very very big.
Nobody knew how telegraph technology could traverse it.
Until that is, an American businessman with a beard and no moustache
called Cyrus West Field finally figured it out.
We need a very very very very very very very very very long cable.
But laying a very very very very very very very
very very very very very long cable under the ocean
presented some unique challenges.
It took several failed attempts to lay a cable that worked.
The first cable wasn't long enough.
The second cable snapped.
The third cable fell in the water.
The fourth cable wasn't compatible with the fifth cable
and couldn't be joined up in the middle.
Finally four years later, Cyrus's first Transatlantic cable was complete.
On August 16th 1858, Queen Victoria sent the very first transatlantic text message, reading...
"Glory to God in the highest; on Earth peace and goodwill toward men."
And it was sent to President James Buchanan.
At just two minutes per letter, the message was received
in little over 17 hours.
The cable stopped working after just a few weeks.
But it didn't matter. The technology was proven possible.
The very same cable-laying technology was used
to lay more and more cables all over the world
each one more reliable than the last
which grew into the phone network
which grew into the Internet.
It was the beginning of the internet.
Cable laying is done pretty much the same way today
Drop it in.
Only nowadays, when the cable's nearer the shore they tend to
bury it a bit
for good measure.
But the one big difference is what's in the wires.
A modern subsea internet cable is about as thick as a human garden hose.
The business bit carrying the actual data is a tiny bunch of fibre-optic cables.
It's coated in a protective layer of polyethylene, copper sheathing, aluminum or steel wires
according to taste, and lovingly smothered in vaseline.
5 minutes and 17 seconds to cover the entire history of long distance communication
and we didn't miss a single detail out.
What about radio?
Which means we are now finally ready to take a good look
at the gorgeous map of all the undersea cables that exist today.
Any regrets?
No not really.
What about buying these cheap parachutes?
Oh yeah, apart from that yeah, that's probably the main one.
What about you?
Er...
I regret that I never turned my big idea into a business reality.
Oh what was that?
A fail-safe parachute that can't get twisted.
That's a nice idea. Why didn't you follow through with it?
Well, it was all a bit big and scary.
And anyway, I never could find a good easy to use e-commerce platform that worked for me.
Oh why don't you try Shopify?
Shopify is an all-in-one commerce platform
that makes it super easy to create an online store.
You just sign up, and Shopify has everything you need
to make a beautiful website, add products,
set prices and deals, and handle inventory.
Whatever you're selling Shopify makes the business
of growing and managing a business super easy.
Isn't MapMenMerch.com powered by Shopify?
It is, yes.
Just goes to show, even a pair of absolute dunderheads like the Map Men
with no technological know-how whatsoevs
can cobble together some T-shirts, mugs, posters, and stickers
and sell them to customers all around the whole wide world.
What's a dunderhead?
If you've got something to sell,
why not click the link in the description below
to take the first step to starting your own business
using good old Shopify?
There, I've done it! Parachutesafety.net is open for business thanks to Shopify
And it was as easy as falling out of an airplane.
(They laugh)
SPLAT! SPLAT!
Shopify!
Don't wait to start your big idea.
This delightful colourful map from Telegeography's submarinecablemap.com
is a true map of the Internet.
It shows all of the 552 and counting undersea cables
which allow very different parts of the world to use the exact same Internet.
There is, of course, a much denser network of wires over land.
After all, landlocked countries deserve the internet too.
But it's nowhere near as interesting to look at.
Some of the unlikely routes on this map reveal that it's cheaper and faster to lay a sea cable
even when a land route is available.
Such as these ones that bounce around the outside of Africa and South America
this one that goes all the way over the top of Russia
and this one that goes from America to America.
The clear, clean, and mostly straight lines of this undersea cables map
ignoring southeast Asia
strikingly show which parts of the world are most interested in which other parts.
North America and Europe for example have got way more
cables connecting them than seemingly necessary.
reflecting the huge amount of cross-continental commerce
and communication that goes on between them.
Whilst data from Australia to South America is happy to take the more scenic route.
So it's perhaps no coincidence that this map so strongly
resembles maps of major flight paths and shipping lanes.
It's also no coincidence that countries with the fewest
cable connections tend to be the world's poorest.
Just one cable serves The Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Guinea,
Sierra Leone and Liberia.
But does the number of connections you have and to whom actually matter?
Wouldn't one cable each be plenty of Internet to be going around?
Sadly not.
These cables are susceptible to breakage
due to sabotage from hostile countries, earthquakes and being eaten by sharks.
So it makes sense to have at least a couple of spares.
In 2022 the Shetland Islands became even more remote
when their key cable was shredded by an overzealous fishing boat.
"I'll tell you who the killer was... it was..."
Ah, Duncan must be home.
More importantly
the cables under the sea carry about $10 trillion worth of financial transactions every day.
And if those cables failed, nobody would be able to buy
pink suitcases, funny hats, teddy bears or basketballs.
So if these cables are so completely critical to life in 2023
or whichever year it is where you are
shouldn't we be worried about who actually owns them?
Yes we should.
Because increasingly these cables are being built by a very...
It was the beginning of the Internet.
...small handful of powerful companies.
Google, Microsoft and Meta have spent billions of human dollars
building their own massive private cables
And this matters partly, because we all then become dependent
on these largely unregulated companies
for a crucial piece of 21st century infrastructure.
But also, can we really be sure these tech giants aren't
listening into their fancy hoses
to collect yet more of the valuable private data belonging to you and me?
With so much of our daily technology use now wireless
be it the phone in your pocket or the router in the awkward bit of the drawer next to the TV
it's important to remind ourselves that the Internet is not some invisible benevolent technology.
It still requires physical things.
Servers, wires, data centres.
It's particularly telling that we refer to the mysterious netherworld
where all the world's computers connect as "the cloud"
when it's actually on the bottom the ocean
the opposite of a cloud.
So, next time you send an email, stream a TV show
or listen to the audio only of 20% of an episode of Map Men
with the video minimised in a tab in the background,
remember
it's been through a layer of vaseline.