Long-distance communication at a relatively high speed (compared to carrying messages) came about with the invention of the optical telegraph in France, fifty years before the electrical telegraph.

The optical telegraph network consisted of a chain of towers, each placed 5 to 20 kilometres apart from each other. On each of these towers a wooden semaphore and two telescopes were mounted (the telescope was invented in 1600). The semaphore had two signalling arms which each could be placed in seven positions. The wooden post itself could also be turned in 4 positions, so that 196 different positions were possible. Every one of these arrangements corresponded with a code for a letter, a number, a word or (a part of) a sentence.

1,380 kilometres an hour

Every tower had a telegrapher, looking through the telescope at the previous tower in the chain. If the semaphore on that tower was put into a certain position, the telegrapher copied that symbol on his own tower. Next he used the telescope to look at the succeeding tower in the chain, to control if the next telegrapher had copied the symbol correctly. In this way, messages were signed through symbol by symbol from tower to tower. The semaphore was operated by two levers. A telegrapher could reach a speed of 1 to 3 symbols per minute.

The technology spread through Europe, but was confounded by wars and governments. It eventually faded when the electrical telegraph came into use. Read all about this amazing but obsolete technology at Low-tech Magazine. Link -via the Presurfer

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The Optical Telegraph

Briam Lam figured out the best LED lightbulb, and explains why it will eventually pay for itself: “They’ll last 15-25 years compared to about a year for regular bulbs [and] 1/5th of the power … so they can eventually save you hundreds of dollars.” [Wirecutter]

Originally posted here:
The LED light bulb you’ve been waiting for

For when you really want your office to “go green.”

Visit site:
There I Fixed It: Ch-ch-ch-Chyeah!

The Magic Mountain Lodge is a luxury resort set in a private nature preserve in the mountains of Chile. It’s built to resemble a hollowed-out mountain. Fountains at the top can pour water over the surface, making it look like a series of caves in a waterfall. You can view more pictures at the link. The photos showing the lodge after heavy snowfall are particularly striking.

Official Website -via Offbeat Home

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Magic Mountain Lodge

Got
cash? Not necessary in Sweden, who has gone (mostly) cashless:

Sweden was the first European country to introduce bank notes in
1661. Now it’s come farther than most on the path toward getting rid
of them. […]

In most Swedish cities, public buses don’t accept cash; tickets
are prepaid or purchased with a cell phone text message. A small but
growing number of businesses only take cards, and some bank offices
— which make money on electronic transactions — have stopped
handling cash altogether.

“There are towns where it isn’t at all possible anymore to
enter a bank and use cash,” complains Curt Persson, chairman of
Sweden’s National Pensioners’ Organization.

The upside? Crimes are down:

The number of bank robberies in Sweden plunged from 110 in 2008
to 16 in 2011 — the lowest level since it started keeping records
30 years ago. It says robberies of security transports are also down.

“Less cash in circulation makes things safer, both for the
staff that handle cash, but also of course for the public,” says
Par Karlsson, a security expert at the organization.

Link
– via GeekPress

Continued here:
Cash is King, Except in Sweden

peetm sends this quote from the BBC:
“When the Spanish Civil War began in 1936, both Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy sent troops to help the nationalists under Franco. But with the conflict dispersed across the country, some means of secure communication was needed for the German Condor Legion, the Italians and the Spanish forces under Franco. As a result, a set of modified commercial Enigma machines were delivered by Germany. … A key figure in trying to understand it was Dilly Knox, a classicist who had been working on breaking ciphers since World War I. He was fascinated by the machine and began studying ways in which an intercepted message might in theory be broken, even writing his own messages, encrypting them and then trying to break them himself. But there was no opportunity to actually intercept a real message since German military signals were inaudible in Britain. However, the signals produced by the machines sent to Spain in 1936 were audible enough to be intercepted and Knox began work. … Within six or seven months of having his first real code to crack, Knox had succeeded, producing the first decryption of an Enigma message in April 1937.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read more here:
The Spanish Link In Cracking the Enigma Code

Feast
your eyes on this, Neatoramanauts: the world’s first diamond ring. But
but, you say, diamond rings have been around forever. Yes, but not like
this: a ring carved straight out of a single giant 150-carat diamond,
by Shawish Jewelry.

Yours for a mere $70 million.

Link – via
OhGizmo

Taken from:
World’s First All-Diamond Ring

US Army debuts app marketplace prototype: iOS first, Android coming soon originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 23 Mar 2012 20:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Original post:
US Army debuts app marketplace prototype: iOS first, Android coming soon

ananyo writes “Researchers have made a cloak that can hide objects from static magnetic fields, realizing a theoretical prediction they made last year. This ‘antimagnet’ could have medical applications, but could also be used to subvert airport security. The cloak’s interior is lined with turns of tape made from a high-temperature superconductor. Superconductors repel magnetic fields, so any magnetic field enclosed within a superconductor would be undetectable from outside. But the superconductor itself would still perturb an external magnetic field, so the researchers coated its external side with an ordinary ferromagnet. The superconductor tries to repel external field lines, whereas the ferromagnet tries to draw them in — together, the two layers cancel each other out (abstract).”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read More:
'Antimagnet' Cloak Hides Objects From Magnetic Fields