Dead Media

While reading about the brilliant Arabic scientist Al-Haitham, who laid the foundations of optics while under house arrest for failing to control the Nile in the 11th century, and may have influenced the development of perspective by Brunelleschi 400 years later, I stumbled on an ancient (1997!) post on dead forms of media. Here's a snippet...

DEAD OPTICAL NETWORKS

Roman light telegraph;
Polybius's torch telegraph ca 150 BC
Moundbuilder Indian signal mounds
Babylonian fire beacons
Fire signals on the Great Wall of China

Amontons' windmill signals (1690)

OPTICAL TELEGRAPHY:
Johannes Trithemius's Steganographia (ca 1500?)
Dupuis-Fortin optical telegraph (France 1788)
Chappe's "Synchronized System" and "Panel Telegraph"
(France 1793)
Claude Chappe's French Optical Telegraph (France 1793)
The Vigigraph (France 1794)
Edelcrantz's Swedish Optical Telegraph (1795)
British Admiralty Optical Telegraph (1795)
Bergstrasser's German Optical Telegraph (1786)
Chudy's Czech Optical Telegraph (the Fernschreibmaschine)
(1796)

As I bask in the breezy glow of my new Dell laptop, and think fondly of CP/M on the family's fancy Kaypro, I reflect on techn0-hubris, and consider the Apples of the Mall. They toil not, neither do they spin.