Messages in depth: the amazing story of the underwater Internet
The Internet is an integral part of our life, an incredibly complex network built over many years, in fact, it is a network of cables that encircle the entire Earth, including passing through the seas and oceans. Humanity has come a long way since the laying of the first transatlantic submarine telegraph cable in 1858 between the United States and Great Britain. In this article, we will talk about how the Internet overcame “water barriers”, multi-kilometer depths and underwater cataclysms, what difficulties were on the way and how incredibly difficult to keep this system in a connected state in our time, what huge amounts of money and energy it requires.
In the early 1970s, the US government received a report that the Soviet Union laid the underwater communication cable in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk connecting the Soviet naval base in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, which is on the Kamchatka Peninsula, with the headquarters of the Soviet Pacific Fleet in Vladivostok. At that time, the USSR considered the Sea of ​​Okhotsk its inland sea, which is why foreign ships had no right to sail in it. In addition, the USSR Navy installed a network of sonars along the border of the sea to prevent foreign submarines from penetrating unnoticed into the territorial waters of the USSR. Despite these obstacles, in October 1971, the US government decided to conduct a secret reconnaissance operation. Successful conduct of the operation promised very important information about the defense capability of the USSR. To accomplish this task, a special submarine USS Halibut (SSGN-587) headed by Captain James Bradley was sent to the Sea of ​​Okhotsk. The cable was searched for over 600,000 km², but despite this, American divers managed to find the Soviet cable - it lay at a depth of about 120 meters. A special device was installed above the cable - the “cocoon”, as the Russians later called it, which provided an opportunity to intercept messages and negotiations over the cable without physical intervention into the shell. The device was designed in such a way that it should have been automatically separated from the cable if Soviet specialists began to lift it from the seabed, for example, to carry out repairs.
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Every month, the US military took away tapes of telephone records of Soviet sailors and installed new ones. They were transmitted to the NSA, where they were processed, and information from them was transferred to other government agencies. Listening to the first tapes showed that the Soviet sailors were so sure that no one could overhear their telephone conversations, that the telephone signal itself was transmitted in unencrypted form. The content of the conversations of high-ranking Soviet sailors turned out to be very important for understanding the meaning of the actions of the USSR Navy in the region.
Subsequently, it was possible to install advanced intelligence equipment on the USSR communication lines in other parts of the world, for example, in the Barents Sea. The equipment was manufactured by the American company AT & T. It used nuclear power equipment, allowing autonomous operation during the year.
The operation continued until 1981, until it became known that Soviet ships appeared in the area of ​​the reconnaissance device. The United States immediately sent a submarine USS Parche with the task to pick up the device, but the Americans could not find it.
The man who ruined this covert operation was Ronald William Pelton, a 44-year-old US NSA veteran, who was fluent in Russian and a highly qualified communications specialist. Pelton was a gambling man and lost heavily in slot machines, his debt was $ 65,000. In addition, he was unhappy with his status at the NSA, receiving a reward of $ 2,000 a month. Three months before his dismissal from the NSA, Pelton went to court to declare him bankrupt. In January 1980, Pelton appealed to the USSR Embassy in Washington and offered his professional knowledge in exchange for money from the KGB.
Pelton did not give the Soviet intelligence officers any documents: he told everything from memory. He had a phenomenal photographic memory. From the KGB representatives, Pelton received $ 35,000. In exchange, he passed on everything he knew, from 1980 to 1983. Pelton also spoke about the operation “Birch”, for which he received $ 5,000 from the KGB. All this became known only from the words of Pelton himself. The Soviet leadership did not respond to this information.
In July 1985, KGB Colonel Vitaly Yurchenko fled to the United States, who was Pelton's liaison in Washington. Yurchenko told the Americans about Pelton, who was later arrested. Only after this, the Soviet leadership decided to verify Pelton’s information about Operation Birch. The USSR managed to find the device of the Americans. Subsequently, he was exhibited in one of the museums in Moscow.
After the arrest, Pelton quickly confessed to treason and espionage in favor of the USSR. In 1986, he was convicted for life by a jury, despite the fact that there was no strong evidence, other than his confession, against him. Pelton is currently serving three life sentences, but his early release is scheduled for November 2015.
The success of the US operation in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk has led to numerous similar operations in subsequent years. For example, the crew of the USS Parche submarine in 1985 installed another tracking device on a cable in the Barents Sea, which went unnoticed and was used until 1992, and in the Mediterranean Sea, tracking equipment was installed in 1985 submarine cables between Europe and North Africa. Operation USS Parche was completed only in 2004, it was replaced by the USS Jimmy Carter, a modified version of the submarine with a gateway on board, which allowed divers to go out into the outer space to work with the cable.
Since the end of the "espionage" Cold War, submarine communication cables have become widely used exponentially throughout the world. According to data published by TeleGeography, a company that keeps records and researches the telecommunications services market, there are currently 277 submarine fiber-optic cables in the world. These cables deliver 99% of all telecommunication traffic, and their length is 986,543 km. Every day they are transferred to the amount of data equivalent to several hundred libraries of the US Congress. This massive growth of communication systems around the world forces us to develop tracking and control methods accordingly.
In the image below, you can observe the growth of telecommunication networks from 1989 to 2014.
Special thanks to TeleGeography for making this data public.
A more detailed map of underwater communication channels can be found on the TeleGeography website http://submarinecablemap.com/ .
Back in the 1970s. Operation Birch was the first underwater espionage in history. At that time, copper cables were used, where the signal was transmitted using electrical pulses. The Soviets were so confident in the security of their line of communication that they passed on the signal without using any encryption, the Americans could only record it and once a month extract the records for interception.
Modern cables are fiber-optic systems, where the signal is transmitted using photons and encrypted. The current task of wiretapping can be accomplished in one of two ways: either by splicing (splicing) the cable and dividing the photon flux with a prism, or by bending the cable to the point where data leakage begins. In the documents that fell into the Guardian in 2012, Edward Snowden showed how the British and American intelligence agencies “listened” to over 200 cables as part of an ongoing extensive spyware project initiated in 2008, completely undermining the privacy of ordinary citizens around the world. At the same time, The Guardian unveiled how the British intelligence agency GCHQ daily intercepts data on a scale equivalent to the 192nd British libraries.
The public reaction to these "revelations" had far-reaching consequences. Reuters reported that the EU threatened to suspend data sharing agreements with the United States until Washington provided guarantees for protecting the privacy of EU citizens. French telecommunications service provider Orange intends to sue the NSA for illegally using their submarine cables. He also said that Privacy International, an international privacy advocacy organization based in Britain, recently filed a lawsuit against the British government for espionage violating the constitutional rights of citizens.
More than 80% of Latin America’s international fiber-optic communications currently pass through the United States, which means that laws passed in other countries will be largely powerless against eavesdropping the United States. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff announced plans to invest $ 185 million in building a transatlantic fiber-optic cable that connects her country directly to EU countries, bypassing the United States, which she claims will “guarantee the neutrality” of Brazilian Internet traffic, however however, it remains unclear how it will be protected from American or English wiretaps.
The dubious security of the planned Brazil-EU cable raises questions about a much more important issue for the fiber-optic network - protection. The cost and logistical requirements of patrolling such vast systems are astronomical and in most cases impossible without international government support. Even if private companies had the resources and motivation to protect their networks, they could still be forced by the government to “cooperate.” In fact, as reported by the Washington Post in 2013, many overseas and domestic telecommunications companies with channels to or from the United States already legally have to cooperate with the FBI, the FCC and the Department of Homeland Security to ensure full access to their fiber optical cables.
We try to support the development of future technologies, but sometimes it is worth looking back on the innovations of the past. You and I live in an amazing and magical world, now it’s easy to talk with your interlocutor across the ocean or even have a videoconference, but most of us are still not aware of the incredible difficulties that had to be overcome in order to make such communication possible.
With the opening of telegraphic communication and the laying of the first land-based telegraph cables, man’s imagination invariably developed this idea, because in fact Queen Victoria, who ascended to the throne in 1837, had no faster means of communicating with remote parts of her empire than those that Julius had Caesar.
Few people know, but the first attempt to use the underwater cable for telegraphic communication belonged to Sömmering (Samuel T. von Soemmering), in 1811, he laid a strip across the Isar River, near Munich, and conducted tests that showed the importance and complexity of manufacturing good insulation. A year later, in Russia, Pavel Schilling successfully used not yet a telegraph cable, but an underwater cable to detonate sea mines from the shore with an electric fuse. In 1839, Dr. O'Shaughnessy, who led the East Indian Telegraph Company, completed the installation of a telegraph cable along the bottom of the Hooghly River, located near Calcutta. Whether the project was successful or not - unfortunately, it is now impossible to know, since that time no records have been preserved. But even then the idea of ​​telegraphic connectivity between various regions separated by seas and even oceans was rapidly developing.
Thus, in 1840, the English professor Whitson presented a draft telegraph cable between Dover and France to the House of Commons. It was the first serious project of this kind that deserves attention. Whitson even conducted tests between the vessel and the lighthouse in Swansea Bay (South Wales), but the idea did not receive legislative support and, consequently, money, in parliament it was treated as an unrealizable fantasy. . Two years later, Samuel Morse, who invented the most common version of the telegraph, tied up with a submarine cable, protected by rubber and lead pipe, the shores of New York Harbor and conveyed the message.
Only almost a decade later, the laying of the telegraph cable under the English channel, the newly formed telegraph company of the brothers Jacob and John Brett (a former antiquarian who had accumulated a solid state in this business and far from telegraphy), began, having received the support of the French government and business circles, decided to use single-core a copper cable in gutta-percha to wire England and France by telegraphic communication. A contract was signed with Gutta-Percha for the manufacture of cable and, as is often the case with new projects, a number of issues and problems were not taken into account, the existence of which was not even suspected at that time. Among other things, the deadlines were very tight, it was necessary to complete the project by September 1, 1850, in less than 15 months, otherwise the company would have expected bankruptcy due to non-fulfillment of agreements with investors.
Due to the primitiveness of the cable to many at that time, his work under water seemed unlikely, which, in principle, was not far from the truth. However, they did not even try to make it durable, because the cable will quietly lie at the bottom of the strait, where nothing can happen to it. To protect the cable from accidental damage with lead pipes, it was decided to protect only the beached ends.
Skeptics struggled to darken the joy of entrepreneurs, and the most active were those who least understood the features of this project. Having seen the cable already prepared for laying, one gentleman said: “These people are out of their mind: how can you pull such a long and thick wire, if it also lies on an uneven seabed,” since he was sincerely convinced that signals from one bank to another will be transmitted, as in the homes of grandees (by twitching the wire, when you need to call someone from the servants).
3 days before the deadline, on August 28, 1850, the 40-kilometer cable was delivered to the Goliath steam-towing tug in a coil 2 meters in diameter and over 5 meters long, which occupied almost the entire deck. Began laying cable. And immediately the problem ... The cable, protected by gutta-percha, was too buoyant and did not want to sink at all, it was necessary to make stops and hang lead weights every 100 meters, which slowed down the progress considerably. However, the Cape Gri-Ne on the French side was reached on the same day, and the cable was immediately connected to the receiving telegraph. Everyone stood waiting ... But instead of a message of greeting, only incoherent signals were received from the British side, it seemed that the British too early celebrated the establishment of a communication line. Replacing the device did not bring results, but suddenly, through the chaos of signals and interferences, it was possible to decipher a few words from the greeting of John Brett to Emperor Louis Bonaparte. Contractual conditions are met, the company has avoided bankruptcy.
Unfortunately, all subsequent attempts to accept any kind of coherent signals were unsuccessful, Brett did not even suspect that they were confronted with a phenomenon that remained a mystery for many years. Being in an environment with high conductivity, the cable changes its conductive properties, in popular language, the signals begin to move along it with an unequal speed depending on the duration of the signal, the “points” start moving faster and catch up with the next “dash”. If the operators between the sending of signals of various lengths had pauses, they would probably be able to transmit the message, but they didn’t know the true reason for the failure and therefore they couldn’t apply such a simple solution in practice.
In addition, the next day, any signals disappeared. As it turned out, the French fisherman hooked the cable with an anchor, and due to the fact that he was light, easily lifted him on board, the unusual appearance of the algae with shiny streaks impressed him so much that he decided to cut off a part just in case and consult with friends to find out , is it gold? So the war began between cable owners and shipowners, causing significant damage by drifting anchors and fishing trawls. The only thing that in our time this damage is mutual, as modern cables are massive enough to tear off a fishing trawl in the event of a hook.
The cable of 1850 demonstrated the possibility of telegraph communication through the strait and Brett, turning to Tommas Krempton, a well-known telegraph cable designer, asked him to design a new cable for this task. Among other things, they managed to get from him about half the amount for the project - 15,000 pounds sterling. The new cable was significantly different from the previous one, it was already a 4-core copper cable with a core diameter of 1.5 mm and a 2.5 mm layer of gutta percha around. The veins were twisted and wrapped with tarred fibers from hemp stalks, and outside the cable was covered with “steel armor” of 10 wires twisted in a spiral. Now the cable looked like a steel cable, the fishermen could no longer remove it, had a diameter of 35 mm and weighed 30 times the first Brett cable, about 4.5 kg per meter.
On September 25, 1851, the cable was laid, but not without difficulties, a lot of weight almost destroyed the project, as the cable promptly rushed overboard, besides, the vessel due to the wind somewhat deviated from the course and the cable ended for a couple of kilometers up to the goal, the spare coil saved the situation It took a couple more weeks for various tests and commissioning, before the telegraph communication between England and the continent became a matter of a few seconds.
Cable laying (1906).
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Telegraph communication gained popularity, but the ocean still remained an insurmountable obstacle. Delivery of messages from the Old World to the New still took a lot of time. English engineer Frederick Newton Gisborne, who lives in Nova Scotia, decided in 1850 to connect Nova Scotia with Newfoundland with an underwater cable in order to shorten the message delivery time between England and America by 2 days. Unfortunately, his project did not receive sufficient funding, and in 1853 his company went bankrupt. But this project was the impetus for the implementation of a new idea, much more daring, which no one had ever seriously thought about before. Although the famous Samuel Morse predicted more than a decade ago that it would sometime be possible to organize a telegraph link between England and America, no real implementation efforts were made, few believed in the possibility of such a thing, it seemed unlikely to receive funds for such a project.
But fate brought Gizborne to businessman Cyrus Field in New York, Gisborne asked for funds to complete the construction, Field listened politely and did not make any promises, but, left alone, he realized that he was considering a globe. What Gisburne said made an indelible impression on him and left its mark, Newfoundland was just one point on the road to a more ambitious project! After all, why wait for months for messages delivered by steamboats to get the news, if you can get information much faster using the telegraph? Field decided to bridge this huge gulf separating the two worlds, to connect the American telegraph system with the European one.
The very next day, Field wrote letters to Morse and Lieutenant Mori, one of the founders of oceanography, asking what is required for such a project. Fortunately for Field, Morse just tested in England the possibility of transmitting a telegraph signal over long distances, for which he needed to enclose 10 segments of a telegraph network between London and Birmingham into a single chain, receiving a section of 3200 km, which roughly corresponded to the length of the future transatlantic cable. Morse managed to transmit up to 200 signals per minute via this link, which was a very good result. Then Field visited Mori, who told him about the discovered oceanic plateau between Newfoundland and Ireland, as if specially created to lay a cable on it, because there were no large depth differences, and the depth did not exceed 4500 meters.
Inspired by the good news, Field began to seek support from business and government circles. In 1854, he accepted the affairs of the bankrupt Telegraph Company and paid all the debts in exchange for the 50-year monopoly right to operate and build telegraph lines through Labrador and Newfoundland. Upon returning to New York, despite the early morning, at 6 am, Field gathered all investors and guarantors to sign commitments of $ 1,250,000 for this project, so the New York Newfoundland and London Telegraph Company was founded. ".
1. Peter Cooper (President).
2. David D. Field.
3. Chandler White (Secretary).
4. Marshall O. Roberts.
5. Samuel FB Morse (Vice President).
6. Daniel Huntington.
7. Moses Taylor (Treasurer).
8. Cyrus W. Field.
9. Wilson G. Hunt.
However, before the first part of the name gained real meaning, it took 2.5 years. The first cable laying across the Gulf of St. Lawrence was unsuccessful and the cable sank, we had to do everything anew, and only in 1856 the line was put into operation.
Now it was necessary to begin the second, more difficult stage, for which the support of the British government was already required. Surprisingly, the evidence presented by Cyrus experts was so convincing that Field’s project not only met with no resistance, but even aroused genuine interest. Nevertheless, the questions were: Foreign Secretary Lord Clarendon asked Field for: “If your project fails and your cable disappears on the ocean floor, what will you do then?” After all, the funds allocated to you and the expected benefits from the project will be irretrievably lost! ”, To which Field responded with prophetic in some sense the words“ We will again take up the work and start all over again. ” As a result, Field received a subsidy from the British government in the amount of £ 14,000 per year, which is nowadays equivalent to about £ 150,000, as well as a ship that could be used in the laying process.
On November 12, 1856, the first meeting of the Atlantic Telegraph Company took place in Liverpool, where Field, a talented engineer Bright, and Brett, already known to you for laying a telegraph cable under the channel, determined the commercial value of the project - ÂŁ 350,000. A quarter of the funds Field decided to invest personally, in the hope of the patriotic feelings of their fellow citizens, because he considered this project extremely important for America.
Surprisingly, America did not think so - investors from their homeland allocated only ÂŁ 27,000, and some were completely skeptical and negative; for example, Toro 2 years before the described events said:
“We are in a hurry to combine the telegraphic connection of Maine with Texas, but it may happen that when we do this, there will be nothing to say to each other. We are struggling to bring the idea of ​​the transatlantic connection to life, but I would not be surprised if the first message to be transmitted by the new method of communication is a notice that Princess Adelaide has whooping cough. ”
With the British government, according to Cyrus, it was much easier to negotiate than with the US, some congressmen were strongly opposed to allocating about $ 70,000 from the country's budget annually to maintain contact with England, and both ends of the cable would be under control British territory and in the event of war the whole cable would be in the hands of the enemy:
“I do not want to have anything in common with either England or the British, everyone knows that if the British are interested in something, wait for a trick, and you will certainly have to suffer innocent Americans,” some of the senators said.
Nevertheless, the project was approved, but most of the funds were provided by British companies and were collected by Field personally.
In February 1857, having collected all the necessary information on the project specification, Cyrus proceeded to manufacture the cable, commissioning this to the English companies Glass Elliot & Co from Greenwich and RSNewall & Co from Liverpool.
Many calculations were carried out, but much was not taken into account. Designers had to listen to a lot of ideas and suggestions from the public, for example, it was proposed to hang the cable in the middle of the ocean depths on special underwater balls filled with air, or to stretch across the surface between floating stations so that ships could connect and transmit the message. Moreover, at that time, people did not know that water was incompressible and many believed that the cable might not reach the bottom and would hang at a certain depth, where its weight would be balanced by the density of water. There were altogether pessimistic judgments, for example, the royal astronomer Sir Eiri believed that it was mathematically impossible to immerse a cable to such a great depth and signals, moreover, would not be able to advance at such a depth. Alas, even in an educated environment, few people had an idea about electricity. Nevertheless, it was impossible to ignore such proposals, because public interest in the case could have fallen, and hence financial support. Had to respond to such nonsense, "Your comment certainly deserves attention, but still requires further verification."
An important role in the project was played by Lord Kelvin (William Thomson), he conducted experiments with the transmission of telegraph signals over long distances even before Morse, determined the signal transmission rate, which turned out to be much lower than the speed of light and depended on the conductor capacity. This did not play a significant role when the cable was on the surface, its capacity is very small, but here the communication line immersed in water due to the penetration of water through the protective layers significantly increased its capacity. As a result, Kelvin discovered the so-called law of squares, according to which, the speed of signal propagation decreases inversely proportional to distance, that is, as the length of the communication line increases by 10 times, the speed drops 100 times. This discovery was extremely important for long distance underwater wiring - it was necessary to calculate the optimal diameter of the conductor to ensure transmission at the desired speed, but Field, like Morse, did not obey Thomson, as they were in a hurry.
Being only one of the directors of a telegraph company, Thomson could not insist on carrying out the necessary tests, and he only had to control the cable manufacturing process, the design documentation for which was already put to work. In the process of manufacturing, Thomson found that not all cable sections were made of homogeneous copper, which changed the conductive properties more than 2 times, he reported this problem and at least here could make "improvements", since the subsequent manufacturing was carried out from a homogeneous material. After 6 months, the cable was ready. The total weight of the 7-core copper cable covered with tarred hemp fibers and a layer of gutta-percha, as well as a protective sheath of 18 cords, 7 wires in each, with a length of about 4000 km, amounted to 3000 tons, 620 kg per kilometer. More than 30,000 km of copper wire and 50,000 km of steel wire were spent on making the cable.
Great cable weight has set a new problem. At that time, there were no ships capable of transposing such weight, the cable had to be distributed between 2 warships: the HMS Agamemnon sailing-steam battleship and the USS Niagara steam-powered frigate, which were provided for laying work by the American and British governments. Edward Whitehouse, who had long been interested in telegraphy and well-versed in it, although he was a surgeon by profession, was to direct the installation. In the future, he played a negative role in the project, as he did not know how to admit his mistakes. At the last moment before sailing, he referred to poor health, and in the end Thomson had to direct the laying.
On August 5, 1857, Agammemnon and Niagara began their journey across the ocean from the bay of Valencia, from under the castle of Ballyberbury, in the county of Kerry on the south-west coast of Ireland. At the beginning, the cable had to be laid by the American Niagara, and halfway through the ends, the armor of which turned out to be carried out in opposite directions, which also gave rise to difficulties, English Agamemnon had to start working. In this regard, there was an advantage, as it provided a continuous connection with the earth. But on the very first day of the expedition, the cable broke off just 10 km from the coast, when it got stuck in the corroding mechanism, and had to start all over again, slowing down the course to 2 knots and laying more carefully.
Soon the London "Time" reported:
“With Niagara, a cable that she pulls to America keeps in touch. Due to the unevenness of the bottom, cable etching overboard passes at a speed somewhat higher than the speed of the vessel itself, and at the current time it has been possible to lay about 370 km of communication line. On the way of laying, Lag showed an increase in depth from 1,000 to 3,200 meters over just 15 km, but now the vessel is in the area of ​​terrifying depths, and the laying is carried out at 3,600 m. ”
But the happiness did not last long, the next day the connection unexpectedly stopped, and then later it appeared in the same amazing way, whether there were any malfunctions in the cable or receiving / transmitting devices - now it is difficult to determine. In any case, the disaster happened the next day. Due to the large depths, the cable etching rate was about 6 knots, with a ship moving at 4 knots. It was not clear whether the cable lay flat or twisted into the coils, whether the cable was too tight, which threatened to either shorten the cable or break it. As a result, a decision was made to reduce the etching rate, the brake pads were tightened, but they did it too abruptly, and the cable broke. 620 km of expensive cable were lost and nothing was left but to postpone the operation for a year, as the existing cable was not enough to complete the construction of the communication line.
Nevertheless, it was a good experience, as it showed that the project could be feasible, the telegraph worked despite the fact that the cable was laid at almost 4 km depth. Engineers reviewed the design of the etching mechanism and made a modification in which the brake weakened if the tension became too strong. But Thomson continued his experiments and found that when a pulse is applied to one end (a “dot” or “dash”), then at the other end it is observed not as an instantaneous voltage increase, but as a smoothly rising wave, which can be compared with a dam breakthrough when it is possible to guess a breakthrough in raising the water level in the river (small preliminary wave, initial impulse) even before the arrival of the main wave. It turns out that by registering the initial impulse and using more sensitive equipment for this, you can not wait for the impulse itself, which will avoid unnecessary distortion and increase the transmission speed. However, Whitehouse decided to go the other way - to increase the momentum so that even less sophisticated equipment, such as his own development, could register it, which had serious consequences in the future and once again confirmed the fact that his ability to do something wrong, just exceptional.
The next attempt to lay the transatlantic cable was made in the spring of 1858, Whitehouse, like last time, referred to poor health and did not go on an expedition, his duties happened to be performed again by Thomson. At the insistence of engineers, this time the laying should be started from the middle of the ocean. By connecting the ends of the cables, the ship would move in opposite directions. But less than two days from the moment of departure from the coast of England, as the strongest storm broke out of the ever recorded in the Atlantic. “Agammemnon”, having about 1300 tons of cable in the holds (Tenks) and about 250 tons on the deck, found itself in a particularly difficult position and almost lost stability, the roll exceeded 45 degrees, sometimes the yacht’s ships touched the water and a terrible crash was heard, the ship miraculously surged on the crest of huge waves and did not go into the abyss. The fleet was scattered in the ocean. The week continued the struggle with the elements, and, finally, when the storm subsided, the ships, once again assembled, were able to continue their journey.
The starting point for laying was reached on June 26th, the cables were soldered and Agammemnon headed east and Niagara went west. No sooner had “Niagara” walked 5 km, as the cliff happened. Ships that maintained telegraph communication between themselves had to return to the starting point and start all over again, good, quite a bit of cable was lost. The next day, being at a distance of 150 km from each other, the ships again lost contact. Once again I had to return to the point of departure to find out what had happened. Surprisingly, this time the reason was the cable gap at the bottom of the ocean. The third attempt ended with the laying of 370 km of cable - when the break was already at Agammemnon, the ships had no choice but to return to the Irish port to replenish stocks and discuss the current situation. Some of the directors of the company lost all faith in the success of the business and offered to abandon the project altogether, selling cable residues, but, not finding support, resigned, feeling deeply disgusted with the telegraph business. But Thomson and Field did not give up and by July 29th the laying of the cable was resumed.
When for the 4th time the ships began to move away from each other, no one believed in the success of the business, but everyone hoped. It should be noted that there were no correspondents on Niagara who covered such a significant event, as the American fleet had a strong tradition of not allowing journalists on board, but they wouldn’t tell anything interesting, the laying was rather routine. But on the "Agammemnon" was not without incident, says one of the journalists:
“One day the operation was in jeopardy because of a whale, the whale moved straight to the cable, at the last moment he jumped under the cable and passed by, but it was not the only stress. On another day, during the strongest excitement, the connection simply disappeared, it was a pity to look at Field, the veins on his forehead swelled, he turned pale and tried to find out what the reason was, most of all then were afraid of a cliff. Having finished analyzing the data from the devices, it became clear that there is a chance to revive the cable, and probably only the conductive part was damaged, the insulation remained intact, there was no break. The gasket was continued in the hope that it would be possible to revive the cable, and after a while, to everyone's surprise, the connection was resumed.However, there was no complete peace, the cable in huge waves was only a thin “silver thread” that could break at any time, and the continuing bad weather caused excessive consumption of coal, which also threatened the project. But the storm passed, although I had to worry after that, one day the American yachtsman decided to approach the ship, forcing him to change course in order to avoid a collision, which carried a direct threat to the cable. The escort ship was forced to give a warning volley in order to scare away the inordinately curious American. Obviously, he thought that we were smugglers, or once again took it for insulting the American flag, however, he stopped and did not make any attempts to get close until we were out of sight. ”
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Ultimately, the united British companies Gutta-Percha and Glasse, Elliot and Co. decided to invest about half of the funds. They themselves came up with the need to organize a new communication line, after which Field managed to get the rest from private capital. The total cost of the project at this time was estimated at 600,000 pounds, and only 10 percent of the amount was provided by the Americans.
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The history of the commercial exploitation of the Great Eastern is rather sad and full of failures. From the very beginning, the project was surprisingly unprofitable, as it surpassed the needs of its time. His launch took 82 days, and the company involved in its construction simply went bankrupt, the ship was sold for 20% of the cost, but people died during the first test voyage, the burst pipe fatally scalded the sailors, and 2 months later the captain drowned during the stay in southampton. The prejudices were so strong that when the ship set off for a flight to New York, only 46 people bought tickets, and this despite the fact that the ship was ready to receive and comfortably accommodate 4000! Swimming passed at an amazing speed for that time, in just 10.5 days. However, the ship had to be auctioned off,it was bought by the railway company for only 25,000 pounds, the 30th part of the real cost, and immediately offered to take Cyrus Field to lay the cable for rent with the condition that if the cable is laid successfully, Cyrus will not have to pay a rent for a cent.
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“They did not even have time to lay 155 km of cable, as the devices recorded damage. The vessel did not have a device for cable picking, and such a procedure at the stern threatened to damage the propeller. The cable had to be cut, to transfer the cut off end to the bow of the vessel, which is quite difficult with a ship length of 210 meters, and already there with the help of a special lifting device to carry out the ascent. The damage was found and repaired: a 5-centimeter piece of steel wire was plugged into the middle of the cable, which agitated many, since it was extremely similar to malicious intent. The cable was spliced ​​and resumed laying, but less than a kilometer later - a repetition of the situation, this time the devices were guilty, and the laying was resumed.
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However, the crew of the Great Eastern did not want to give up and give the cable to the ocean, despite the lack of special equipment, for several days they tried to find and lift the cable, and they succeeded. But unfortunately the cable was cut off at each attempt to lift it, dragging to an even greater depth the cable on which the catch hook was located. Having spent all the reserves of the cable to grip the cable, there was nothing else left but to complete the mission. Ocean won. However, only for a while.
On the 13th of July of the following year, the laying was started again, with a cable in a more advanced armor and with a device on the stern in case of a problem. The mission was successful, on July 27, the transfer of the first commercial messages was started and on the very first day the investments began to return, the cable “earned” more than 1000 pounds. A year later, the lost cable was lifted; in total, we had to make more than 30 attempts to search and lift it, and ultimately, in order to win a huge weight, we had to lift it in 2 stages, lift a part in one place above the bottom, and then lift another. Now, when 2 communication lines were working, there was simply no doubt about the prospects of this type of communication. 10 years of work and 5 expeditions were not in vain. A great experience was gained and finally a reliable permanent connection was established between the Old World and the New,which was not interrupted for more than 8 hours, never.
Subsequently, technical solutions were also finalized, telegraph operators receiving telegrams were replaced by machines (before this, telegrams could arrive in a very distorted form, especially when the message is transmitted through several telegraph networks and some of the operators do not “hear”). It became possible to transmit up to 4 telegrams simultaneously using a switch, but one of the most important achievements of the underwater telegraph was the possibility of transmitting messages simultaneously in two directions, thanks to which up to 8 telegrams can be transmitted simultaneously, 400 words per minute, 100 times more than that the first transatlantic telegraph could transmit. Very soon, a network of submarine cables girdled the Earth. Only until 1870 there were over 17,000 km of established underwater communication channels,but it was possible to completely build a “belt around the Earth” and overcome the Pacific Ocean only by the beginning of the 20th century, in which even more difficult tasks arose for underwater communications, such as voice transmission over vast distances and ultimately building a worldwide Internet network.
Just think, they are still there, at the bottom of the oceans, these first similar cables. Some of them are even capable of working. And what is most amusing, despite the fact that nowadays, fiber optic lines are being laid - methods of laying and protection are still similar to those used in the 19th century. The cables remain covered with steel wire for protection and kinks are measured by measuring the resistance of the metal inside to determine the length before the cable breaks. The main difference is the capacity. While the first submarine cables could transmit several words per minute, modern submarine cables are capable of transmitting 84,000,000,000 words per second. What can I say, progress does not stand still. Modern underwater fiber-optic communication channels are able to transmit 50,000 times more data than the first underwater fiber-optic channel,held in 1988 year.
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At first, damage was caused by aquatic flora and fauna, in addition to the imperfection of the cable itself and its insulation. In the period from 1877 to the 1960s, 16 cases of loss of cable performance due to whales were reported. In the entire history, about 40 fish snacking cases occurred, mainly this problem was relevant for telegraph lines until 1964, except for the case between 1985 and 1987, when the optical cable in the Canary Islands was damaged by a shark:
Shark Bites Fiber Optic Cables Undersea 15.8.2014
Now this problem is not so acute, since the cables are buried in the bottom to a depth of about a meter after laying, the influence of wildlife is minimized, among other things, the design of protection of those parts of the cable that are still at the bottom in "unprotected" form.
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In December 2006, a strong earthquake shook the Asian region, 80% of the submarine cables connecting Taiwan with the rest of the world were out of order, the malfunction led to the loss of half of the Internet capacity in Hong Kong, significantly affecting the availability of overseas sites for China. The problems shocked the financial institutions of the region, from Seoul to Sydney, and turned out to be the most destructive for the financial market, as the Internet has become extremely important for the structures of the global economy.
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At sea, the most common causes of faults are still the trawler and anchors of ships. Cable network cards have become much advanced and GPS navigators allow even the smallest ships to avoid problems, because nowadays the cables are so strong that in the case of a hook damage will be received and the guilty ship, in addition to a huge bill for the damage, so that shipowners are primarily interested. However, 70% of cable damage occurs at depths less than 200 m and can be attributed to accidental damage or damage due to the use of a trawl. Approximately 100 to 150 cables per year are damaged in this way. A trawler focused on a good catch does not notice that it is approaching the cable. Fortunately, such cases almost always occur in shallow water, which facilitates the recovery procedure.
People usually do not notice any complications in the event of a malfunction in the submarine cable, with the possible exception of a slight interruption during a telephone conversation or an almost imperceptible pause during the loading of a website. To ensure such a high level of service, the submarine networks were originally built in the form of rings, so that it was possible, as a rule, in less than half a second to redirect traffic if the cable failed. This is effective, but expensive, as the potential remains unused on one side of the ring.
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One of the real wonders of the modern international telecommunications network is that you, as a subscriber, making for example a call overseas, do not need to worry about which route it will take, what equipment and what operating systems you will use, with whom and in what amount to calculate, you only worry about your own phone and pay only to your telephone service provider. But what makes this possible?
The global network is built in accordance with the standards of an international organization called the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). ITU is a United Nations agency. It has “Training Groups”, in which there are telecommunication operators and equipment manufacturers for various nodes of the telecommunications network. Despite the fact that annually there are hundreds of "recommendations" that ensure the normal functioning of the infrastructure and its improvement, the end user of services is protected from the engineering details of this very complex network. Most of the Internet is also built in accordance with the recommendations of the ITU, but has in addition its own standards and control authorities, allowing many different Internet providers to work together.The most notable of these oranges is the Internet Engineering Task Force (http://www.ietf.org/).
Maintaining such a huge infrastructure in the work is not easy and there is a whole industry involved in this. Thousands of employees and hundreds of ships work every day to ensure that you have access to the network, do you still think that you are paying too much for Internet access? Is the Internet too simple for you?
All networks are constantly checked for correct operation and discontinuities. Tests are conducted by cable ground stations or monitoring centers to determine the location of the gaps. There are three main ways to test.
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Cable laying workers and crews are also in a difficult situation. This is psychologically difficult and responsible work. Repair of the cable network or its installation can take considerable time, sometimes several weeks. The worst thing is that there is never any certainty when the work will be completed. Everything can go wrong during the final stage, leading to a delay of at least several days or even weeks. After completing one job, the vessel can receive instructions to sail straight to a new one, without returning to the port. And then the period of one voyage may exceed a month. Fortunately, cable managers often have very creative chefs who continue to delight the crew and the workers with interesting dishes throughout the journey, despite the depleted stocks of products. Bad weather also presents a problem, as it not only introduces delays in the workflow,but also interferes with normal sleep, sometimes for several days. The cabler personnel are faced with the need to do highly skilled work, while deprived of sleep. Unfortunately, the method of treating motion sickness, suggested by comedian Spike Milligan: “Go and sit under a tree,” is not often available to those who repair cables.
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In a typical British family, you will find three or four smartphones, a laptop and at least one tablet. The use of pacemakers and other medical devices in the modern world requires an Internet connection, because it is extremely important for doctors to be aware of their condition in order to replace them in time, or simply to monitor the patient's condition remotely, and maybe even conduct operations. According to a Cisco report, over 10 billion devices connected to the Internet network were registered in 2013, and in 2020 this figure is projected to exceed 50 billion. Our dependence on the Internet is growing steadily and requires ever-greater bandwidth. and new communication channels. So, in the same 2013 year, the total traffic of the Internet was 51 exabytes (51 billion gigabytes) per month and if the development will take place in the same dynamics as before,then by 2018, the figure will reach 132 exabytes.
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Underwater Cold War: Operation "Birch"
In the early 1970s, the US government received a report that the Soviet Union laid the underwater communication cable in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk connecting the Soviet naval base in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, which is on the Kamchatka Peninsula, with the headquarters of the Soviet Pacific Fleet in Vladivostok. At that time, the USSR considered the Sea of ​​Okhotsk its inland sea, which is why foreign ships had no right to sail in it. In addition, the USSR Navy installed a network of sonars along the border of the sea to prevent foreign submarines from penetrating unnoticed into the territorial waters of the USSR. Despite these obstacles, in October 1971, the US government decided to conduct a secret reconnaissance operation. Successful conduct of the operation promised very important information about the defense capability of the USSR. To accomplish this task, a special submarine USS Halibut (SSGN-587) headed by Captain James Bradley was sent to the Sea of ​​Okhotsk. The cable was searched for over 600,000 km², but despite this, American divers managed to find the Soviet cable - it lay at a depth of about 120 meters. A special device was installed above the cable - the “cocoon”, as the Russians later called it, which provided an opportunity to intercept messages and negotiations over the cable without physical intervention into the shell. The device was designed in such a way that it should have been automatically separated from the cable if Soviet specialists began to lift it from the seabed, for example, to carry out repairs.
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Every month, the US military took away tapes of telephone records of Soviet sailors and installed new ones. They were transmitted to the NSA, where they were processed, and information from them was transferred to other government agencies. Listening to the first tapes showed that the Soviet sailors were so sure that no one could overhear their telephone conversations, that the telephone signal itself was transmitted in unencrypted form. The content of the conversations of high-ranking Soviet sailors turned out to be very important for understanding the meaning of the actions of the USSR Navy in the region.
Subsequently, it was possible to install advanced intelligence equipment on the USSR communication lines in other parts of the world, for example, in the Barents Sea. The equipment was manufactured by the American company AT & T. It used nuclear power equipment, allowing autonomous operation during the year.
The operation continued until 1981, until it became known that Soviet ships appeared in the area of ​​the reconnaissance device. The United States immediately sent a submarine USS Parche with the task to pick up the device, but the Americans could not find it.
The man who ruined this covert operation was Ronald William Pelton, a 44-year-old US NSA veteran, who was fluent in Russian and a highly qualified communications specialist. Pelton was a gambling man and lost heavily in slot machines, his debt was $ 65,000. In addition, he was unhappy with his status at the NSA, receiving a reward of $ 2,000 a month. Three months before his dismissal from the NSA, Pelton went to court to declare him bankrupt. In January 1980, Pelton appealed to the USSR Embassy in Washington and offered his professional knowledge in exchange for money from the KGB.
Pelton did not give the Soviet intelligence officers any documents: he told everything from memory. He had a phenomenal photographic memory. From the KGB representatives, Pelton received $ 35,000. In exchange, he passed on everything he knew, from 1980 to 1983. Pelton also spoke about the operation “Birch”, for which he received $ 5,000 from the KGB. All this became known only from the words of Pelton himself. The Soviet leadership did not respond to this information.
In July 1985, KGB Colonel Vitaly Yurchenko fled to the United States, who was Pelton's liaison in Washington. Yurchenko told the Americans about Pelton, who was later arrested. Only after this, the Soviet leadership decided to verify Pelton’s information about Operation Birch. The USSR managed to find the device of the Americans. Subsequently, he was exhibited in one of the museums in Moscow.
After the arrest, Pelton quickly confessed to treason and espionage in favor of the USSR. In 1986, he was convicted for life by a jury, despite the fact that there was no strong evidence, other than his confession, against him. Pelton is currently serving three life sentences, but his early release is scheduled for November 2015.
The success of the US operation in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk has led to numerous similar operations in subsequent years. For example, the crew of the USS Parche submarine in 1985 installed another tracking device on a cable in the Barents Sea, which went unnoticed and was used until 1992, and in the Mediterranean Sea, tracking equipment was installed in 1985 submarine cables between Europe and North Africa. Operation USS Parche was completed only in 2004, it was replaced by the USS Jimmy Carter, a modified version of the submarine with a gateway on board, which allowed divers to go out into the outer space to work with the cable.
Since the end of the "espionage" Cold War, submarine communication cables have become widely used exponentially throughout the world. According to data published by TeleGeography, a company that keeps records and researches the telecommunications services market, there are currently 277 submarine fiber-optic cables in the world. These cables deliver 99% of all telecommunication traffic, and their length is 986,543 km. Every day they are transferred to the amount of data equivalent to several hundred libraries of the US Congress. This massive growth of communication systems around the world forces us to develop tracking and control methods accordingly.
In the image below, you can observe the growth of telecommunication networks from 1989 to 2014.
Special thanks to TeleGeography for making this data public.
A more detailed map of underwater communication channels can be found on the TeleGeography website http://submarinecablemap.com/ .
Underwater espionage: "tie-ins" into fiber optic cables
Back in the 1970s. Operation Birch was the first underwater espionage in history. At that time, copper cables were used, where the signal was transmitted using electrical pulses. The Soviets were so confident in the security of their line of communication that they passed on the signal without using any encryption, the Americans could only record it and once a month extract the records for interception.
Modern cables are fiber-optic systems, where the signal is transmitted using photons and encrypted. The current task of wiretapping can be accomplished in one of two ways: either by splicing (splicing) the cable and dividing the photon flux with a prism, or by bending the cable to the point where data leakage begins. In the documents that fell into the Guardian in 2012, Edward Snowden showed how the British and American intelligence agencies “listened” to over 200 cables as part of an ongoing extensive spyware project initiated in 2008, completely undermining the privacy of ordinary citizens around the world. At the same time, The Guardian unveiled how the British intelligence agency GCHQ daily intercepts data on a scale equivalent to the 192nd British libraries.
The public reaction to these "revelations" had far-reaching consequences. Reuters reported that the EU threatened to suspend data sharing agreements with the United States until Washington provided guarantees for protecting the privacy of EU citizens. French telecommunications service provider Orange intends to sue the NSA for illegally using their submarine cables. He also said that Privacy International, an international privacy advocacy organization based in Britain, recently filed a lawsuit against the British government for espionage violating the constitutional rights of citizens.
More than 80% of Latin America’s international fiber-optic communications currently pass through the United States, which means that laws passed in other countries will be largely powerless against eavesdropping the United States. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff announced plans to invest $ 185 million in building a transatlantic fiber-optic cable that connects her country directly to EU countries, bypassing the United States, which she claims will “guarantee the neutrality” of Brazilian Internet traffic, however however, it remains unclear how it will be protected from American or English wiretaps.
The dubious security of the planned Brazil-EU cable raises questions about a much more important issue for the fiber-optic network - protection. The cost and logistical requirements of patrolling such vast systems are astronomical and in most cases impossible without international government support. Even if private companies had the resources and motivation to protect their networks, they could still be forced by the government to “cooperate.” In fact, as reported by the Washington Post in 2013, many overseas and domestic telecommunications companies with channels to or from the United States already legally have to cooperate with the FBI, the FCC and the Department of Homeland Security to ensure full access to their fiber optical cables.
Overcome the English Channel: Uncharted Complexities of Delivering the First Underwater Messages
We try to support the development of future technologies, but sometimes it is worth looking back on the innovations of the past. You and I live in an amazing and magical world, now it’s easy to talk with your interlocutor across the ocean or even have a videoconference, but most of us are still not aware of the incredible difficulties that had to be overcome in order to make such communication possible.
With the opening of telegraphic communication and the laying of the first land-based telegraph cables, man’s imagination invariably developed this idea, because in fact Queen Victoria, who ascended to the throne in 1837, had no faster means of communicating with remote parts of her empire than those that Julius had Caesar.
Few people know, but the first attempt to use the underwater cable for telegraphic communication belonged to Sömmering (Samuel T. von Soemmering), in 1811, he laid a strip across the Isar River, near Munich, and conducted tests that showed the importance and complexity of manufacturing good insulation. A year later, in Russia, Pavel Schilling successfully used not yet a telegraph cable, but an underwater cable to detonate sea mines from the shore with an electric fuse. In 1839, Dr. O'Shaughnessy, who led the East Indian Telegraph Company, completed the installation of a telegraph cable along the bottom of the Hooghly River, located near Calcutta. Whether the project was successful or not - unfortunately, it is now impossible to know, since that time no records have been preserved. But even then the idea of ​​telegraphic connectivity between various regions separated by seas and even oceans was rapidly developing.
Thus, in 1840, the English professor Whitson presented a draft telegraph cable between Dover and France to the House of Commons. It was the first serious project of this kind that deserves attention. Whitson even conducted tests between the vessel and the lighthouse in Swansea Bay (South Wales), but the idea did not receive legislative support and, consequently, money, in parliament it was treated as an unrealizable fantasy. . Two years later, Samuel Morse, who invented the most common version of the telegraph, tied up with a submarine cable, protected by rubber and lead pipe, the shores of New York Harbor and conveyed the message.
Only almost a decade later, the laying of the telegraph cable under the English channel, the newly formed telegraph company of the brothers Jacob and John Brett (a former antiquarian who had accumulated a solid state in this business and far from telegraphy), began, having received the support of the French government and business circles, decided to use single-core a copper cable in gutta-percha to wire England and France by telegraphic communication. A contract was signed with Gutta-Percha for the manufacture of cable and, as is often the case with new projects, a number of issues and problems were not taken into account, the existence of which was not even suspected at that time. Among other things, the deadlines were very tight, it was necessary to complete the project by September 1, 1850, in less than 15 months, otherwise the company would have expected bankruptcy due to non-fulfillment of agreements with investors.
Due to the primitiveness of the cable to many at that time, his work under water seemed unlikely, which, in principle, was not far from the truth. However, they did not even try to make it durable, because the cable will quietly lie at the bottom of the strait, where nothing can happen to it. To protect the cable from accidental damage with lead pipes, it was decided to protect only the beached ends.
Skeptics struggled to darken the joy of entrepreneurs, and the most active were those who least understood the features of this project. Having seen the cable already prepared for laying, one gentleman said: “These people are out of their mind: how can you pull such a long and thick wire, if it also lies on an uneven seabed,” since he was sincerely convinced that signals from one bank to another will be transmitted, as in the homes of grandees (by twitching the wire, when you need to call someone from the servants).
3 days before the deadline, on August 28, 1850, the 40-kilometer cable was delivered to the Goliath steam-towing tug in a coil 2 meters in diameter and over 5 meters long, which occupied almost the entire deck. Began laying cable. And immediately the problem ... The cable, protected by gutta-percha, was too buoyant and did not want to sink at all, it was necessary to make stops and hang lead weights every 100 meters, which slowed down the progress considerably. However, the Cape Gri-Ne on the French side was reached on the same day, and the cable was immediately connected to the receiving telegraph. Everyone stood waiting ... But instead of a message of greeting, only incoherent signals were received from the British side, it seemed that the British too early celebrated the establishment of a communication line. Replacing the device did not bring results, but suddenly, through the chaos of signals and interferences, it was possible to decipher a few words from the greeting of John Brett to Emperor Louis Bonaparte. Contractual conditions are met, the company has avoided bankruptcy.
Unfortunately, all subsequent attempts to accept any kind of coherent signals were unsuccessful, Brett did not even suspect that they were confronted with a phenomenon that remained a mystery for many years. Being in an environment with high conductivity, the cable changes its conductive properties, in popular language, the signals begin to move along it with an unequal speed depending on the duration of the signal, the “points” start moving faster and catch up with the next “dash”. If the operators between the sending of signals of various lengths had pauses, they would probably be able to transmit the message, but they didn’t know the true reason for the failure and therefore they couldn’t apply such a simple solution in practice.
In addition, the next day, any signals disappeared. As it turned out, the French fisherman hooked the cable with an anchor, and due to the fact that he was light, easily lifted him on board, the unusual appearance of the algae with shiny streaks impressed him so much that he decided to cut off a part just in case and consult with friends to find out , is it gold? So the war began between cable owners and shipowners, causing significant damage by drifting anchors and fishing trawls. The only thing that in our time this damage is mutual, as modern cables are massive enough to tear off a fishing trawl in the event of a hook.
The cable of 1850 demonstrated the possibility of telegraph communication through the strait and Brett, turning to Tommas Krempton, a well-known telegraph cable designer, asked him to design a new cable for this task. Among other things, they managed to get from him about half the amount for the project - 15,000 pounds sterling. The new cable was significantly different from the previous one, it was already a 4-core copper cable with a core diameter of 1.5 mm and a 2.5 mm layer of gutta percha around. The veins were twisted and wrapped with tarred fibers from hemp stalks, and outside the cable was covered with “steel armor” of 10 wires twisted in a spiral. Now the cable looked like a steel cable, the fishermen could no longer remove it, had a diameter of 35 mm and weighed 30 times the first Brett cable, about 4.5 kg per meter.
On September 25, 1851, the cable was laid, but not without difficulties, a lot of weight almost destroyed the project, as the cable promptly rushed overboard, besides, the vessel due to the wind somewhat deviated from the course and the cable ended for a couple of kilometers up to the goal, the spare coil saved the situation It took a couple more weeks for various tests and commissioning, before the telegraph communication between England and the continent became a matter of a few seconds.
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Connecting the Continents: Communication across the Atlantic
Telegraph communication gained popularity, but the ocean still remained an insurmountable obstacle. Delivery of messages from the Old World to the New still took a lot of time. English engineer Frederick Newton Gisborne, who lives in Nova Scotia, decided in 1850 to connect Nova Scotia with Newfoundland with an underwater cable in order to shorten the message delivery time between England and America by 2 days. Unfortunately, his project did not receive sufficient funding, and in 1853 his company went bankrupt. But this project was the impetus for the implementation of a new idea, much more daring, which no one had ever seriously thought about before. Although the famous Samuel Morse predicted more than a decade ago that it would sometime be possible to organize a telegraph link between England and America, no real implementation efforts were made, few believed in the possibility of such a thing, it seemed unlikely to receive funds for such a project.
But fate brought Gizborne to businessman Cyrus Field in New York, Gisborne asked for funds to complete the construction, Field listened politely and did not make any promises, but, left alone, he realized that he was considering a globe. What Gisburne said made an indelible impression on him and left its mark, Newfoundland was just one point on the road to a more ambitious project! After all, why wait for months for messages delivered by steamboats to get the news, if you can get information much faster using the telegraph? Field decided to bridge this huge gulf separating the two worlds, to connect the American telegraph system with the European one.
The very next day, Field wrote letters to Morse and Lieutenant Mori, one of the founders of oceanography, asking what is required for such a project. Fortunately for Field, Morse just tested in England the possibility of transmitting a telegraph signal over long distances, for which he needed to enclose 10 segments of a telegraph network between London and Birmingham into a single chain, receiving a section of 3200 km, which roughly corresponded to the length of the future transatlantic cable. Morse managed to transmit up to 200 signals per minute via this link, which was a very good result. Then Field visited Mori, who told him about the discovered oceanic plateau between Newfoundland and Ireland, as if specially created to lay a cable on it, because there were no large depth differences, and the depth did not exceed 4500 meters.
Inspired by the good news, Field began to seek support from business and government circles. In 1854, he accepted the affairs of the bankrupt Telegraph Company and paid all the debts in exchange for the 50-year monopoly right to operate and build telegraph lines through Labrador and Newfoundland. Upon returning to New York, despite the early morning, at 6 am, Field gathered all investors and guarantors to sign commitments of $ 1,250,000 for this project, so the New York Newfoundland and London Telegraph Company was founded. ".
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However, before the first part of the name gained real meaning, it took 2.5 years. The first cable laying across the Gulf of St. Lawrence was unsuccessful and the cable sank, we had to do everything anew, and only in 1856 the line was put into operation.
Now it was necessary to begin the second, more difficult stage, for which the support of the British government was already required. Surprisingly, the evidence presented by Cyrus experts was so convincing that Field’s project not only met with no resistance, but even aroused genuine interest. Nevertheless, the questions were: Foreign Secretary Lord Clarendon asked Field for: “If your project fails and your cable disappears on the ocean floor, what will you do then?” After all, the funds allocated to you and the expected benefits from the project will be irretrievably lost! ”, To which Field responded with prophetic in some sense the words“ We will again take up the work and start all over again. ” As a result, Field received a subsidy from the British government in the amount of £ 14,000 per year, which is nowadays equivalent to about £ 150,000, as well as a ship that could be used in the laying process.
On November 12, 1856, the first meeting of the Atlantic Telegraph Company took place in Liverpool, where Field, a talented engineer Bright, and Brett, already known to you for laying a telegraph cable under the channel, determined the commercial value of the project - ÂŁ 350,000. A quarter of the funds Field decided to invest personally, in the hope of the patriotic feelings of their fellow citizens, because he considered this project extremely important for America.
Surprisingly, America did not think so - investors from their homeland allocated only ÂŁ 27,000, and some were completely skeptical and negative; for example, Toro 2 years before the described events said:
“We are in a hurry to combine the telegraphic connection of Maine with Texas, but it may happen that when we do this, there will be nothing to say to each other. We are struggling to bring the idea of ​​the transatlantic connection to life, but I would not be surprised if the first message to be transmitted by the new method of communication is a notice that Princess Adelaide has whooping cough. ”
With the British government, according to Cyrus, it was much easier to negotiate than with the US, some congressmen were strongly opposed to allocating about $ 70,000 from the country's budget annually to maintain contact with England, and both ends of the cable would be under control British territory and in the event of war the whole cable would be in the hands of the enemy:
“I do not want to have anything in common with either England or the British, everyone knows that if the British are interested in something, wait for a trick, and you will certainly have to suffer innocent Americans,” some of the senators said.
Nevertheless, the project was approved, but most of the funds were provided by British companies and were collected by Field personally.
In February 1857, having collected all the necessary information on the project specification, Cyrus proceeded to manufacture the cable, commissioning this to the English companies Glass Elliot & Co from Greenwich and RSNewall & Co from Liverpool.
Many calculations were carried out, but much was not taken into account. Designers had to listen to a lot of ideas and suggestions from the public, for example, it was proposed to hang the cable in the middle of the ocean depths on special underwater balls filled with air, or to stretch across the surface between floating stations so that ships could connect and transmit the message. Moreover, at that time, people did not know that water was incompressible and many believed that the cable might not reach the bottom and would hang at a certain depth, where its weight would be balanced by the density of water. There were altogether pessimistic judgments, for example, the royal astronomer Sir Eiri believed that it was mathematically impossible to immerse a cable to such a great depth and signals, moreover, would not be able to advance at such a depth. Alas, even in an educated environment, few people had an idea about electricity. Nevertheless, it was impossible to ignore such proposals, because public interest in the case could have fallen, and hence financial support. Had to respond to such nonsense, "Your comment certainly deserves attention, but still requires further verification."
An important role in the project was played by Lord Kelvin (William Thomson), he conducted experiments with the transmission of telegraph signals over long distances even before Morse, determined the signal transmission rate, which turned out to be much lower than the speed of light and depended on the conductor capacity. This did not play a significant role when the cable was on the surface, its capacity is very small, but here the communication line immersed in water due to the penetration of water through the protective layers significantly increased its capacity. As a result, Kelvin discovered the so-called law of squares, according to which, the speed of signal propagation decreases inversely proportional to distance, that is, as the length of the communication line increases by 10 times, the speed drops 100 times. This discovery was extremely important for long distance underwater wiring - it was necessary to calculate the optimal diameter of the conductor to ensure transmission at the desired speed, but Field, like Morse, did not obey Thomson, as they were in a hurry.
Being only one of the directors of a telegraph company, Thomson could not insist on carrying out the necessary tests, and he only had to control the cable manufacturing process, the design documentation for which was already put to work. In the process of manufacturing, Thomson found that not all cable sections were made of homogeneous copper, which changed the conductive properties more than 2 times, he reported this problem and at least here could make "improvements", since the subsequent manufacturing was carried out from a homogeneous material. After 6 months, the cable was ready. The total weight of the 7-core copper cable covered with tarred hemp fibers and a layer of gutta-percha, as well as a protective sheath of 18 cords, 7 wires in each, with a length of about 4000 km, amounted to 3000 tons, 620 kg per kilometer. More than 30,000 km of copper wire and 50,000 km of steel wire were spent on making the cable.
Great cable weight has set a new problem. At that time, there were no ships capable of transposing such weight, the cable had to be distributed between 2 warships: the HMS Agamemnon sailing-steam battleship and the USS Niagara steam-powered frigate, which were provided for laying work by the American and British governments. Edward Whitehouse, who had long been interested in telegraphy and well-versed in it, although he was a surgeon by profession, was to direct the installation. In the future, he played a negative role in the project, as he did not know how to admit his mistakes. At the last moment before sailing, he referred to poor health, and in the end Thomson had to direct the laying.
On August 5, 1857, Agammemnon and Niagara began their journey across the ocean from the bay of Valencia, from under the castle of Ballyberbury, in the county of Kerry on the south-west coast of Ireland. At the beginning, the cable had to be laid by the American Niagara, and halfway through the ends, the armor of which turned out to be carried out in opposite directions, which also gave rise to difficulties, English Agamemnon had to start working. In this regard, there was an advantage, as it provided a continuous connection with the earth. But on the very first day of the expedition, the cable broke off just 10 km from the coast, when it got stuck in the corroding mechanism, and had to start all over again, slowing down the course to 2 knots and laying more carefully.
Soon the London "Time" reported:
“With Niagara, a cable that she pulls to America keeps in touch. Due to the unevenness of the bottom, cable etching overboard passes at a speed somewhat higher than the speed of the vessel itself, and at the current time it has been possible to lay about 370 km of communication line. On the way of laying, Lag showed an increase in depth from 1,000 to 3,200 meters over just 15 km, but now the vessel is in the area of ​​terrifying depths, and the laying is carried out at 3,600 m. ”
But the happiness did not last long, the next day the connection unexpectedly stopped, and then later it appeared in the same amazing way, whether there were any malfunctions in the cable or receiving / transmitting devices - now it is difficult to determine. In any case, the disaster happened the next day. Due to the large depths, the cable etching rate was about 6 knots, with a ship moving at 4 knots. It was not clear whether the cable lay flat or twisted into the coils, whether the cable was too tight, which threatened to either shorten the cable or break it. As a result, a decision was made to reduce the etching rate, the brake pads were tightened, but they did it too abruptly, and the cable broke. 620 km of expensive cable were lost and nothing was left but to postpone the operation for a year, as the existing cable was not enough to complete the construction of the communication line.
Nevertheless, it was a good experience, as it showed that the project could be feasible, the telegraph worked despite the fact that the cable was laid at almost 4 km depth. Engineers reviewed the design of the etching mechanism and made a modification in which the brake weakened if the tension became too strong. But Thomson continued his experiments and found that when a pulse is applied to one end (a “dot” or “dash”), then at the other end it is observed not as an instantaneous voltage increase, but as a smoothly rising wave, which can be compared with a dam breakthrough when it is possible to guess a breakthrough in raising the water level in the river (small preliminary wave, initial impulse) even before the arrival of the main wave. It turns out that by registering the initial impulse and using more sensitive equipment for this, you can not wait for the impulse itself, which will avoid unnecessary distortion and increase the transmission speed. However, Whitehouse decided to go the other way - to increase the momentum so that even less sophisticated equipment, such as his own development, could register it, which had serious consequences in the future and once again confirmed the fact that his ability to do something wrong, just exceptional.
The next attempt to lay the transatlantic cable was made in the spring of 1858, Whitehouse, like last time, referred to poor health and did not go on an expedition, his duties happened to be performed again by Thomson. At the insistence of engineers, this time the laying should be started from the middle of the ocean. By connecting the ends of the cables, the ship would move in opposite directions. But less than two days from the moment of departure from the coast of England, as the strongest storm broke out of the ever recorded in the Atlantic. “Agammemnon”, having about 1300 tons of cable in the holds (Tenks) and about 250 tons on the deck, found itself in a particularly difficult position and almost lost stability, the roll exceeded 45 degrees, sometimes the yacht’s ships touched the water and a terrible crash was heard, the ship miraculously surged on the crest of huge waves and did not go into the abyss. The fleet was scattered in the ocean. The week continued the struggle with the elements, and, finally, when the storm subsided, the ships, once again assembled, were able to continue their journey.
The starting point for laying was reached on June 26th, the cables were soldered and Agammemnon headed east and Niagara went west. No sooner had “Niagara” walked 5 km, as the cliff happened. Ships that maintained telegraph communication between themselves had to return to the starting point and start all over again, good, quite a bit of cable was lost. The next day, being at a distance of 150 km from each other, the ships again lost contact. Once again I had to return to the point of departure to find out what had happened. Surprisingly, this time the reason was the cable gap at the bottom of the ocean. The third attempt ended with the laying of 370 km of cable - when the break was already at Agammemnon, the ships had no choice but to return to the Irish port to replenish stocks and discuss the current situation. Some of the directors of the company lost all faith in the success of the business and offered to abandon the project altogether, selling cable residues, but, not finding support, resigned, feeling deeply disgusted with the telegraph business. But Thomson and Field did not give up and by July 29th the laying of the cable was resumed.
When for the 4th time the ships began to move away from each other, no one believed in the success of the business, but everyone hoped. It should be noted that there were no correspondents on Niagara who covered such a significant event, as the American fleet had a strong tradition of not allowing journalists on board, but they wouldn’t tell anything interesting, the laying was rather routine. But on the "Agammemnon" was not without incident, says one of the journalists:
“One day the operation was in jeopardy because of a whale, the whale moved straight to the cable, at the last moment he jumped under the cable and passed by, but it was not the only stress. On another day, during the strongest excitement, the connection simply disappeared, it was a pity to look at Field, the veins on his forehead swelled, he turned pale and tried to find out what the reason was, most of all then were afraid of a cliff. Having finished analyzing the data from the devices, it became clear that there is a chance to revive the cable, and probably only the conductive part was damaged, the insulation remained intact, there was no break. The gasket was continued in the hope that it would be possible to revive the cable, and after a while, to everyone's surprise, the connection was resumed.However, there was no complete peace, the cable in huge waves was only a thin “silver thread” that could break at any time, and the continuing bad weather caused excessive consumption of coal, which also threatened the project. But the storm passed, although I had to worry after that, one day the American yachtsman decided to approach the ship, forcing him to change course in order to avoid a collision, which carried a direct threat to the cable. The escort ship was forced to give a warning volley in order to scare away the inordinately curious American. Obviously, he thought that we were smugglers, or once again took it for insulting the American flag, however, he stopped and did not make any attempts to get close until we were out of sight. ”
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Ultimately, the united British companies Gutta-Percha and Glasse, Elliot and Co. decided to invest about half of the funds. They themselves came up with the need to organize a new communication line, after which Field managed to get the rest from private capital. The total cost of the project at this time was estimated at 600,000 pounds, and only 10 percent of the amount was provided by the Americans.
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The history of the commercial exploitation of the Great Eastern is rather sad and full of failures. From the very beginning, the project was surprisingly unprofitable, as it surpassed the needs of its time. His launch took 82 days, and the company involved in its construction simply went bankrupt, the ship was sold for 20% of the cost, but people died during the first test voyage, the burst pipe fatally scalded the sailors, and 2 months later the captain drowned during the stay in southampton. The prejudices were so strong that when the ship set off for a flight to New York, only 46 people bought tickets, and this despite the fact that the ship was ready to receive and comfortably accommodate 4000! Swimming passed at an amazing speed for that time, in just 10.5 days. However, the ship had to be auctioned off,it was bought by the railway company for only 25,000 pounds, the 30th part of the real cost, and immediately offered to take Cyrus Field to lay the cable for rent with the condition that if the cable is laid successfully, Cyrus will not have to pay a rent for a cent.
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“They did not even have time to lay 155 km of cable, as the devices recorded damage. The vessel did not have a device for cable picking, and such a procedure at the stern threatened to damage the propeller. The cable had to be cut, to transfer the cut off end to the bow of the vessel, which is quite difficult with a ship length of 210 meters, and already there with the help of a special lifting device to carry out the ascent. The damage was found and repaired: a 5-centimeter piece of steel wire was plugged into the middle of the cable, which agitated many, since it was extremely similar to malicious intent. The cable was spliced ​​and resumed laying, but less than a kilometer later - a repetition of the situation, this time the devices were guilty, and the laying was resumed.
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However, the crew of the Great Eastern did not want to give up and give the cable to the ocean, despite the lack of special equipment, for several days they tried to find and lift the cable, and they succeeded. But unfortunately the cable was cut off at each attempt to lift it, dragging to an even greater depth the cable on which the catch hook was located. Having spent all the reserves of the cable to grip the cable, there was nothing else left but to complete the mission. Ocean won. However, only for a while.
On the 13th of July of the following year, the laying was started again, with a cable in a more advanced armor and with a device on the stern in case of a problem. The mission was successful, on July 27, the transfer of the first commercial messages was started and on the very first day the investments began to return, the cable “earned” more than 1000 pounds. A year later, the lost cable was lifted; in total, we had to make more than 30 attempts to search and lift it, and ultimately, in order to win a huge weight, we had to lift it in 2 stages, lift a part in one place above the bottom, and then lift another. Now, when 2 communication lines were working, there was simply no doubt about the prospects of this type of communication. 10 years of work and 5 expeditions were not in vain. A great experience was gained and finally a reliable permanent connection was established between the Old World and the New,which was not interrupted for more than 8 hours, never.
Subsequently, technical solutions were also finalized, telegraph operators receiving telegrams were replaced by machines (before this, telegrams could arrive in a very distorted form, especially when the message is transmitted through several telegraph networks and some of the operators do not “hear”). It became possible to transmit up to 4 telegrams simultaneously using a switch, but one of the most important achievements of the underwater telegraph was the possibility of transmitting messages simultaneously in two directions, thanks to which up to 8 telegrams can be transmitted simultaneously, 400 words per minute, 100 times more than that the first transatlantic telegraph could transmit. Very soon, a network of submarine cables girdled the Earth. Only until 1870 there were over 17,000 km of established underwater communication channels,but it was possible to completely build a “belt around the Earth” and overcome the Pacific Ocean only by the beginning of the 20th century, in which even more difficult tasks arose for underwater communications, such as voice transmission over vast distances and ultimately building a worldwide Internet network.
Just think, they are still there, at the bottom of the oceans, these first similar cables. Some of them are even capable of working. And what is most amusing, despite the fact that nowadays, fiber optic lines are being laid - methods of laying and protection are still similar to those used in the 19th century. The cables remain covered with steel wire for protection and kinks are measured by measuring the resistance of the metal inside to determine the length before the cable breaks. The main difference is the capacity. While the first submarine cables could transmit several words per minute, modern submarine cables are capable of transmitting 84,000,000,000 words per second. What can I say, progress does not stand still. Modern underwater fiber-optic communication channels are able to transmit 50,000 times more data than the first underwater fiber-optic channel,held in 1988 year.
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At first, damage was caused by aquatic flora and fauna, in addition to the imperfection of the cable itself and its insulation. In the period from 1877 to the 1960s, 16 cases of loss of cable performance due to whales were reported. In the entire history, about 40 fish snacking cases occurred, mainly this problem was relevant for telegraph lines until 1964, except for the case between 1985 and 1987, when the optical cable in the Canary Islands was damaged by a shark:
Shark Bites Fiber Optic Cables Undersea 15.8.2014
Now this problem is not so acute, since the cables are buried in the bottom to a depth of about a meter after laying, the influence of wildlife is minimized, among other things, the design of protection of those parts of the cable that are still at the bottom in "unprotected" form.
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In December 2006, a strong earthquake shook the Asian region, 80% of the submarine cables connecting Taiwan with the rest of the world were out of order, the malfunction led to the loss of half of the Internet capacity in Hong Kong, significantly affecting the availability of overseas sites for China. The problems shocked the financial institutions of the region, from Seoul to Sydney, and turned out to be the most destructive for the financial market, as the Internet has become extremely important for the structures of the global economy.
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At sea, the most common causes of faults are still the trawler and anchors of ships. Cable network cards have become much advanced and GPS navigators allow even the smallest ships to avoid problems, because nowadays the cables are so strong that in the case of a hook damage will be received and the guilty ship, in addition to a huge bill for the damage, so that shipowners are primarily interested. However, 70% of cable damage occurs at depths less than 200 m and can be attributed to accidental damage or damage due to the use of a trawl. Approximately 100 to 150 cables per year are damaged in this way. A trawler focused on a good catch does not notice that it is approaching the cable. Fortunately, such cases almost always occur in shallow water, which facilitates the recovery procedure.
People usually do not notice any complications in the event of a malfunction in the submarine cable, with the possible exception of a slight interruption during a telephone conversation or an almost imperceptible pause during the loading of a website. To ensure such a high level of service, the submarine networks were originally built in the form of rings, so that it was possible, as a rule, in less than half a second to redirect traffic if the cable failed. This is effective, but expensive, as the potential remains unused on one side of the ring.
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One of the real wonders of the modern international telecommunications network is that you, as a subscriber, making for example a call overseas, do not need to worry about which route it will take, what equipment and what operating systems you will use, with whom and in what amount to calculate, you only worry about your own phone and pay only to your telephone service provider. But what makes this possible?
The global network is built in accordance with the standards of an international organization called the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). ITU is a United Nations agency. It has “Training Groups”, in which there are telecommunication operators and equipment manufacturers for various nodes of the telecommunications network. Despite the fact that annually there are hundreds of "recommendations" that ensure the normal functioning of the infrastructure and its improvement, the end user of services is protected from the engineering details of this very complex network. Most of the Internet is also built in accordance with the recommendations of the ITU, but has in addition its own standards and control authorities, allowing many different Internet providers to work together.The most notable of these oranges is the Internet Engineering Task Force (http://www.ietf.org/).
Maintaining such a huge infrastructure in the work is not easy and there is a whole industry involved in this. Thousands of employees and hundreds of ships work every day to ensure that you have access to the network, do you still think that you are paying too much for Internet access? Is the Internet too simple for you?
All networks are constantly checked for correct operation and discontinuities. Tests are conducted by cable ground stations or monitoring centers to determine the location of the gaps. There are three main ways to test.
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Cable laying workers and crews are also in a difficult situation. This is psychologically difficult and responsible work. Repair of the cable network or its installation can take considerable time, sometimes several weeks. The worst thing is that there is never any certainty when the work will be completed. Everything can go wrong during the final stage, leading to a delay of at least several days or even weeks. After completing one job, the vessel can receive instructions to sail straight to a new one, without returning to the port. And then the period of one voyage may exceed a month. Fortunately, cable managers often have very creative chefs who continue to delight the crew and the workers with interesting dishes throughout the journey, despite the depleted stocks of products. Bad weather also presents a problem, as it not only introduces delays in the workflow,but also interferes with normal sleep, sometimes for several days. The cabler personnel are faced with the need to do highly skilled work, while deprived of sleep. Unfortunately, the method of treating motion sickness, suggested by comedian Spike Milligan: “Go and sit under a tree,” is not often available to those who repair cables.
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In a typical British family, you will find three or four smartphones, a laptop and at least one tablet. The use of pacemakers and other medical devices in the modern world requires an Internet connection, because it is extremely important for doctors to be aware of their condition in order to replace them in time, or simply to monitor the patient's condition remotely, and maybe even conduct operations. According to a Cisco report, over 10 billion devices connected to the Internet network were registered in 2013, and in 2020 this figure is projected to exceed 50 billion. Our dependence on the Internet is growing steadily and requires ever-greater bandwidth. and new communication channels. So, in the same 2013 year, the total traffic of the Internet was 51 exabytes (51 billion gigabytes) per month and if the development will take place in the same dynamics as before,then by 2018, the figure will reach 132 exabytes.
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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/375289/
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