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Telegraphs/Telephones in AofL


fyodor

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Do we see any references to telegraphs/telephones in AoL? It would seem almost necessary that if they have the understanding of electromagnetism necessary to develop working electric power that they would also have telegraphs, but I don't seen any reference to it. Wax has a letter informing him of his uncle's death rather than a telegraph message. Did anyone catch any references that I might have missed?

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No, and this is something that occurred to me as well, telegraphs were developed in the 1840's, the people in Alloy are a good 50 years beyond that technologically so they really should be able to invent the telegraph and even the telephone.

This is in-line with Brandon's attempts to avoid "technology levels," but still makes sense in-universe, as it could be the case that Scadrial's population is so concentrated that they don't have as pressing of a need to develop fast long-distance communication technology as we did.

The major advantage of telegraphs in the short term comes from financial gain from up-to-date knowledge of far-flung markets, political information, or timely military intelligence. None of these are a very large concern when the vast majority of the population is concentrated in a single city that contains just about all of the major markets and politics that there are on the world. The rest of the population is also fairly close, either in the Elendel Basin or not worth talking with (and still not that far away) in the Roughs. There also doesn't appear to be any warfare so far on Scadrial.

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According to the map the Elendel basin is 400 miles across. I'd think that instantaneous communications would still be pretty important.

Tathingdwel, which is I assume a Terris community, is several hundred miles from Elendel. Don't people in Tathingdwel want to send messages to Elendel? Would they really want to send someone by train whenever they needed to send a message.

The first telegraph line in the US was from DC to Baltimore, which is considerably less distance.

I understand that technology wouldn't necessarily develop the same way, but it's pretty much impossible to have the technology and scientific understanding necessary for public electricity distribution but not telegraphy.

Anyway, it may be the case that it's just not mentioned, but it seemed to be an odd omission given the centrality of telegraphy in the 19th century.

This is in-line with Brandon's attempts to avoid "technology levels," but still makes sense in-universe, as it could be the case that Scadrial's population is so concentrated that they don't have as pressing of a need to develop fast long-distance communication technology as we did.

The major advantage of telegraphs in the short term comes from financial gain from up-to-date knowledge of far-flung markets, political information, or timely military intelligence. None of these are a very large concern when the vast majority of the population is concentrated in a single city that contains just about all of the major markets and politics that there are on the world. The rest of the population is also fairly close, either in the Elendel Basin or not worth talking with (and still not that far away) in the Roughs. There also doesn't appear to be any warfare so far on Scadrial.

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Also, the ability of Coinshots to travel long distances very rapidly has probably reduced the need for telegraphs and telephones.

I'm sure they'll appear in some form by the 2nd trilogy.

I am dubious. Telegraphy was mass deployed somewhat AFTER railroads in the US. Sending a messenger along a regular train route is still much easier than having a magical bouncing man carry messages back and forth.

Despite this telegraphs were still deployed aggressively along regular train routes. In fact, one of the primary uses was notifying train stations along railroads of delays, crashes, etc. There's just not any way that that regular ongoing communications would be carried out by Coinshots.

Edited by fyodor
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I am dubious. Telegraphy was mass deployed somewhat AFTER railroads in the US. Sending a messenger along a regular train route is still much easier than having a magical bouncing man carry messages back and forth.

Despite this telegraphs were still deployed aggressively along regular train routes. In fact, one of the primary uses was notifying train stations along railroads of delays, crashes, etc. There's just not any way that that regular ongoing communications would be carried out by Coinshots.

I stand corrected. (well, technically I'm sitting...)

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I stand corrected. (well, technically I'm sitting...)

Get up!

I'm not actually terribly bothered by the omission- he might have just left out mentions of telegraphs to create a sense of scale/distance and have the characters running around, etc. I was mostly curious if anyone caught references that I might have missed, where they were referenced using in-world terminology or somesuch.

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There were times (as with the train stopping, after it had been attacked by a masked gunman and had a wounded man aboard) when one would have expected reference to telegraphs, but none arose. Nonetheless, I was assuming that telegraphs (but not telephones or radios) exist, simply because it seems so hard to have electricity and no telegrams, while phones and radios seem more possible to avoid, as well as being bigger impacts on the flow of events.

-- Deus Ex Biotica

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I seem to recall the inspiration for the telegraph was the fundamental understanding that electricity traveled extremely quickly. If you have enough understanding of electricity to be able to make public city lighting you pretty much have to have enough theoretical understanding to know that it could be used as a communications system.

The only reason I could imagine for it not being developed would be a perceived lack of economic incentive. Even then I would expect there had been simple experiments in university labs and such.

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I considered that, too, but it didn't seem accurate - Marasi answers Wayne's question about overlapping time bubbles by citing experiments, rather than saying "it was in the Words of Founding," which shows an outlook of exploration, rather than blinding taking God's word for everything. That might just be because Marasi examines conclusions more closely than most people, but there was someone to do the experiment, too. And once an experiment showed the technology was possible, surely at least one of the rapaciously capitalist Houses would have pursued it.

-- Deus Ex Biotica

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All of this is according to Wikipedia.

The first commercial telegraph was installed in 1845. Noncommercial lines were in place earlier than that.

The first commercial automobile appears to have been sold in 1886.

Early skyscrapers were built around 1890, and were about 10 stories tall.

Finally, the lightbulb was commercialized in 1880.

In AoL, the horseless carriage is a new invention, and lightbulbs were invented in the 20 years that Wax was away from the city. This pretty solidly puts Scadrial in the late 1880s or early 1890s both in general technological level and in electrical technological level. However, it's skyscrapers (which were expected to pass 50 stories) both exceed this timeframe dramatically. That means that on an Earth timeline, the telegraph should have been invented about 40 years earlier. However, technology is progressing faster on Scadrial, due to Sazed's copperminds. And of course, not everything is developing at the same rate, but I would assume that all electrical developments are tied together to some degree.

Looking at this, I don't think I can bend the timeline enough to avoid the existence of the telegraph based solely on technological development.

However, this doesn't completely eliminate the possibility of the absence of the telegraph. Perhaps early attempts to create a telegraph set things on fire, or exploded for some reason (I'm not even going to pretend I could come up with a reason why a telegraph would explode), and this set back telegraph development for some time. With such a centralized civilization, I suspect that independent development of technology was a lot less common than it was on Earth, and therefore a couple accidents could set back technology more than they would have on Earth.

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However, this doesn't completely eliminate the possibility of the absence of the telegraph. Perhaps early attempts to create a telegraph set things on fire, or exploded for some reason (I'm not even going to pretend I could come up with a reason why a telegraph would explode), and this set back telegraph development for some time. With such a centralized civilization, I suspect that independent development of technology was a lot less common than it was on Earth, and therefore a couple accidents could set back technology more than they would have on Earth.

Don't underestimate accidents on Earth, either - the Hindenburg killed public trust in dirigibles fairly completely.

... but, of course, all that research switched to aerofoils1, and even in the Elendel Basin, long-range communication would be a plus. It might be heliographs, or radios, or what have you, but it seems unlikely to me that there would be no such technology, unless the physics of Scadrial somehow make it more difficult, or the Words Of Founding actively discouraged such research somehow.

That said, I still see no reason be assured there are no such technologies, either, even if the absence of their mention is sometimes conspicuous.

-- Deus Ex Biotica

1: Gross over-generalizations for the win!

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However, this doesn't completely eliminate the possibility of the absence of the telegraph. Perhaps early attempts to create a telegraph set things on fire, or exploded for some reason (I'm not even going to pretend I could come up with a reason why a telegraph would explode), and this set back telegraph development for some time. With such a centralized civilization, I suspect that independent development of technology was a lot less common than it was on Earth, and therefore a couple accidents could set back technology more than they would have on Earth.

I don't want to dwell on it too much, but telegraphy is such an elementary application of the electromagnetic principles you'd need to be able to master in a much more sophisticated way to do electricity distribution that it's almost impossible to be able to have the technology they're showing in AoL without telegraphy.

If this were say the germ theory of disease or refrigeration or some sort of chemical refining, sure it's plausible, but electricity distribution is a much more advanced application along the same axis.

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Don't underestimate accidents on Earth, either - the Hindenburg killed public trust in dirigibles fairly completely.

1: Gross over-generalizations for the win!

Yeah, but that had a lot to do with the fact that dirgibles were really kind of crappy-they filled a niche need (slow direct air access to cities) and was replaced by much faster vehicles, albeit ones that had to leave from airports.

When a technology is really crucial it can kill tons and tons of people and still get advanced. Until about the 1840s the most common kind of accidental death was steamship accidents until it was overtaken by .....railroads.

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A couple of reasons why they may not have developed telegraphy:

First, The pepole in the city don't seem to care about the roughs that much. This is from the insane miles so it might be suspect but:

Waxillium didn’t reply. Pars had been a murderer from the City, a butcher who had been caught killing beggars. He’d fled out into the Roughs, and there he had again worked to sate his grisly obsession.

“They didn’t stop him,” Miles spat, stepping forward. “They didn’t send you help. They didn’t care about the Roughs. Nobody cares about the Roughs—they barely seem to notice us save as a place to deposit their trash.”

If communication with the roughs is not that big of a deal in this time period then without a large drive to be able to communicate - and the government grants that go with that drive- other things may have been researched instead. An interesting thing to note is this ocurrance in our history:

In 1835, James Bowman Lindsay demonstrated a constant electric light at a public meeting in Dundee, Scotland. He stated that he could "read a book at a distance of one and a half feet". However, having perfected the device to his own satisfaction, he turned to the problem of wireless telegraphy and did not develop the electric light any further. His claims are not well documented, although he is credited in Challoner etal.[9] with being the inventor of the "Incandescent Light Bulb".

If instead he had continued with the lightbulb how much quicker would we have had electric lighting in the houses of the rich. Also I don't read the electrical system in alloy of law being a standard electric distribution system. I read it instead as being a direct path DC system.

Also Scandrial would have had a much larger emphasis on discovering two metals - keep in mind they know there are 16 metals but have not found chromium or nicrosil yet. This emphasis on finding new metals would could lead to better alloys for lightbulbs sooner then we discovered them.

Basically there are too many variables in their society from ours to say that they would develop technologies in the same order as we would.

Another thing to note is that US technologies have been influenced alot by what is useful in war. Scandrial would not have that.

Edit:Grammar

Edited by discipleofhoid
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A couple of reasons why they may not have developed telegraphy:

First, The pepole in the city don't seem to care about the roughs that much. This is from the insane miles so it might be suspect but:

If communication with the roughs is not that big of a deal in this time period then without a large drive to be able to communicate - and the government grants that go with that drive- other things may have been researched instead. An interesting thing to note is this ocurrance in our history:

The Roughs aren't the only place that they might want to communicate with. There are other cities as well.

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The Roughs aren't the only place that they might want to communicate with. There are other cities as well.

True - The big question here is how fast can an allomancer control his flight - if it is less then 1 day to take a message anywhere they might not have had the push to develop faster communications.

Distance looks about 200 miles from Elendel to anywhere in the basin and 400 from the southern most city to the northernmost.

Assuming flying for 8 hours a day that would be 50 miles an hour. Easily within controllable flight speeds

If you equipped the allomancer with a windshield of some kind to stop bugs that he might hit in flight I would guess that even the 200 miles an hour to have a message to any other city from Elendel in 1 hour would not be unreasonable.

Given that I could see the telegraph not being developed due to lack of economic value.

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You think? I am not sure I can agree that a Coinshot with a Spikeroad could go at 200 MpH, just in general, but even if I were, people have previously noted that a big part of the value of telegraph lines is allowing for train stations to co-ordinate with each other. Wax seems to have no trouble catching up with a moving train, but even if we assume that non-Lurcher Coinshots could all do that, having several of them at every train station seems prohibitively expensive.

No matter how fixated on the Basin people are, fast communication is always valuable, and Allomancy cannot provide it as constantly as telegraphs (or, say Seons).

-- Deus Ex Biotica

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True - The big question here is how fast can an allomancer control his flight - if it is less then 1 day to take a message anywhere they might not have had the push to develop faster communications.

Distance looks about 200 miles from Elendel to anywhere in the basin and 400 from the southern most city to the northernmost.

Assuming flying for 8 hours a day that would be 50 miles an hour. Easily within controllable flight speeds

If you equipped the allomancer with a windshield of some kind to stop bugs that he might hit in flight I would guess that even the 200 miles an hour to have a message to any other city from Elendel in 1 hour would not be unreasonable.

Given that I could see the telegraph not being developed due to lack of economic value.

Once again, the US had regular train routes in place before telegraphy was deployed. No one thought "hey, we can just send a guy by train, no need to have instantaneous communication." And sending someone on a regular train route is much easier and cheaper than having a flying sorcerer constantly on call for routine communications.

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You think? I am not sure I can agree that a Coinshot with a Spikeroad could go at 200 MpH, just in general, but even if I were, people have previously noted that a big part of the value of telegraph lines is allowing for train stations to co-ordinate with each other. Wax seems to have no trouble catching up with a moving train, but even if we assume that non-Lurcher Coinshots could all do that, having several of them at every train station seems prohibitively expensive.

No matter how fixated on the Basin people are, fast communication is always valuable, and Allomancy cannot provide it as constantly as telegraphs (or, say Seons).

-- Deus Ex Biotica

You do have a point with the coordination thing. At this point though there are 3 options either the tech has not been developed, it was just not mentioned in the book, or Brandon made a mistake. The last one is known to be impossible so we are left with the other two. While not having developed the telegraph at this level of technology seems unlikely to me. However in the conditions above(Edit: 2 post of mine ago) I could see it happening. I don't know that I think that situation is likely, but I do think it is plausible.

Edit: Just for clarity - what I am suggesting is that someone developed lights 50 year earlier, possible given my example above. Then the telegraph took a few years longer to develop then it did in our world. That would create a world with electric lights and no wide-scale telegraph. The other points were reasons why the development of the telegraph might have been 5-10 years slower. Not why it would have never been developed.

Edited by discipleofhoid
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Don't underestimate accidents on Earth, either - the Hindenburg killed public trust in dirigibles fairly completely.

A bit off topic but being something of a fan of airships I've long had a rather whimsical desire to go back in time and do whatever I had to do to make sure that radio announcer during the crash did not get on the air. Preferably involving a heavy blunt object. <_<

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