Yo, PJ, could we get some context, or something?
I'm just STARING at this sucker, whatever the hell it is.
Alright, alright, so... the bands of cables going out to do their jobs, granted.
Nah, I'm still confused... HELPPPP!!
this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2026
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There was a recent post about this tower by @stoy@lemmy.zip over in !ccp@discuss.online (shameless plug for the community, I just created it the other day for posting public domain/creative commons stuff!)
https://discuss.online/post/33220770
It's what's known as the Old Stockholm telephone tower, and you're looking at lots and lots of telephone wires, before the whole thing was decommisioned due to running cables underground.
Thanks, mate!
And, uh, I must say, I don't understand what's going on with your username.
"m_f@discuss.online a minute ago
Like, it's got all these loaded, hidden characters that I can't even type, to replicate. It's just... pretty confusing, for me.
Oh well, whatever.
Looks like someone threw in a Unicode RTL marker, making the text go right-to-left.
Gotta have a cable out to each phone, so they can connect to the operator, so the operator can connect them to who they're trying to call!
Well, that's bloody-well amazing. To keep all those cables in order, not to mention resistance-design upon the elements. Whew, laddie...
Eh, who needs "God" when we have all this native, amazing design. (don't answer that, please)
Here's a video showing a modern style underground connection, maybe that can help. Essentially, the tower was used before everything was in a single sheath and put underground. It mist have been a maintenance nightmare!
Damn... I used to lay (and punch) CAT-5 cables way back in the day as a 'techie.'
Those were the DAYS, my friend.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnxTT7XXMPA
Well I was never a splicer, I just maintained the equipment (mechanic). But being around the crews and sometimes going on service calls I learned things. I have no personal experience with how obnoxious it would be to repair a bundle like this!
Man, sometime the repair can be EASY AS PIE, and other times HOLY SHIT TOMORROW IS TUESDAY.
Sorry, my bad, but just to give a glimpse...
HOLY SHIT TOMORROW IS TUESDAY
Truer words were never spoken!
People today like to make fun of the electricity scare of the 19th century:
But I can't really blame them. Most people today don't know how electricity really works, and then imagine this shit looming over head; every day. Feels like Gordon Freeman watching the Citadel; powered only by T-Mobile…which is hardly an improvement over the Combine.
Apparently this cartoon was made a couple weeks after a specific electrical accident.
First of all, I never caught that electricity is a spider.
Note: Cover. Anti-electricity cartoon. Electricity is portrayed as a spider with a cobweb of electrical wires for trapping its human victims.
On October 11, 1889 John Feeks, a Western Union lineman, was high up in the tangle of overhead electrical wires working on what were supposed to be low-voltage telegraph lines in a busy Manhattan district. As the lunchtime crowd below looked on he grabbed a nearby line that, unknown to him, had been shorted many blocks away with a high-voltage AC line. The jolt entered through his bare right hand and exited his left steel studded climbing boot. Feeks was killed almost instantly, his body falling into the tangle of wire, sparking, burning, and smoldering for the better part of an hour while a horrified crowd of thousands gathered below.
Notes from Ohio State University library.
Should have gone with the clacks towers.
I'm honestly surprised people didn't come up with that long before electronic communication. And once they started, people started figuring ways to compress the transmitted data. And for a world full of magic, clacks didn't take magic! Much like today, give a thousand autists keyboards and let them rock out.
They did. But then railways arrived and electrical communication became possible and necessary.
I'm honestly surprised people didn't come up with that long before electronic communication.
Not so much the clacks, but flag semaphore towers were a thing long before the electric telegraph was invented. Infact, the term "Telegraph" predates the device we all think by several centuries.
And there are some pretty awesome systems, like the Chappe telegraph which is about 50 years older than the electric telegraph and had hundreds of kilometers of line between french cities, venice and Amsterdam when people started building electric systems.
The downside is that you need at least one operator per tower, every 10 or so kilometers, even if nobody lives there.
This is why building codes.