the forgotten history of pre-electric media

telecommunications began before electricity
Have you ever wondered how people communicated before electricity? It turns out, early communication devices like fire signals and telegraphs had a lot going on before electricity ever got involved.
The first telegraphs had no wires, and there's a whole world of wonder to uncover if we realize that the history of communications is not the history of electricity.
Along the way, we'll discuss Ancient Greece, Claude Chappe and the optical semaphore telegraph, as well as a heavy dose of introductory media theory from Edward Bernays, Marshall McLuhan, Paul Starr, and more!
Thank you to Ale, Jessamyn, Yuval, and Ciara for their help with this one :)
-----Sources-----
Books and Articles:
Starr, The Creation of the Media
McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
Snow, The Edward Bernays Reader
Holzmann and Pehrson, The Early History of Data Networks
Standage, The Victorian Internet
Carrington, The Talking Drums of Africa
missiology.org.uk/pdf/e-books...
Johnson, The All Red Line: The Annals and Aims of the Pacific Cable Project
Springer, The Telegraph Monopoly
Blondheim, Congress vs the Telegraph News Monopoly, 1866-1900
Links, Section One:
www.britannica.com/technology...
contexto.me
www.jstor.org/stable/1020282
www.johnwharding.com/blowing-...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_...
Links, Section Two:
www.visitourchina.com/special...
• Did American Indians R...
mediatheory.net/media-richnes...
www.historyofinformation.com/...
www.historyofinformation.com/...
www.ancient-origins.net/artif...
www.wikiwand.com/en/Polybius_...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polybiu...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_...
Links, Section Three:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ta...
glebesociety.org.au/street/jo...
cntr.salford.ac.uk/comms/john...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_...
college.unc.edu/2020/06/sound....
open.library.ubc.ca/collectio...
www.jstor.org/stable/25100953...

[@PrettyTranslatorSarahMoon]

Never thought I could be this fascinated by telegraphs... 😳

[@testdummymedia]

That’s the Dummy Difference

[@perrywclifton]

Criminally underrated creator right here. Love your vibe dude

[@testdummymedia]

Thanks!

[@str8andalert]

Hopefully an up and coming creator!

[@cassandrafalkner3405]

to piggyback off this, yes, his energy is absolutely infectious, he's so excited about telegraphs that it makes me excited about telegraphs

[@spyderwillster]

"HE BEAT ME TO MAKING A VIDEO ABOUT THE SEMAPHORE" -me, on seeing just the thumbnail.

[@testdummymedia]

Bahahahhaa

[@FauxRomano]

"infamous pony express" stuck with me throughout the video. Those nefarious ponies! Great video.

[@willstewich]

Great video once again. I’m always learning so much about something I was convinced I already knew a lot about. Thanks for taking the time and effort to do so much research and make it so concise

[@testdummymedia]

❤️

[@Sonic_The_Weredog]

*Great to see you upload again.* ❤

[@testdummymedia]

I’m back!

[@ElementiaYT]

Fascinating topic!

[@testdummymedia]

That’s what got me hooked!

[@JoshuaNeeley]

Awesome video. Loving the channel upgrades as well. Thank you for your research into this topic.

[@testdummymedia]

So glad you enjoyed :) Had a great time digging in

[@rizon98]

This is a really interesting topic! I think, like many people, we've never thought about that middle period of communication or how long some ancient forms of communication have lasted!

[@testdummymedia]

Glad you could spend some time thinking about it!

[@lucas.warhero]

I am always impressed by your videos. You cover topics that are interesting and fun and your perspective is insightful and thoughtful. Good luck as you continue to grow your channel!

[@testdummymedia]

So happy to hear you enjoyed :) thanks for the kind words

[@sylvrstone]

this was fascinating. thank you. 👍

[@testdummymedia]

Glad you enjoyed!

[@tylerhoyt606]

How has it taken me so long to find your channel? Love the videos!

[@testdummymedia]

Glad to hear you enjoy :)

[@cmlevyf]

Started watching you because of your content addiction video. I'm a physicist in my day time and I'm thinking that there's two ways to market this (I'm early in the video so feel free to choose what's the most applicable) 0:48 . 1.) The Science KZbin section. There's BobbyBroccoli who makes great particle / telecomm physics videos who is super sociable and gave me advice on a video who im sure would be happy to advertise this for you if he likes it. If you're going more the sciency route, I'd suggest losing the video essay part of the title, have the title be more clear for that market such as "How Electromagnetic Waves Revolutionize Communication" or something like thias,and make the thumbnail more sciency. 2.) You could get the tech community interested. I know less about this community, but im thinking itd just be more about technological progression. Like a "How We Went From This To This". I'm not sure what was the predecessor, but lets say it was letter via horse, it'd be like "How Society Went From The Horse To Telegram", with the thumbnail showing that progression with a split screen. Im just chatting shit over here but i hope this is somewhat helpful :)

[@testdummymedia]

Thanks for your thoughts!

[@feylezofriza]

Great video. One objection. Drums might be better than runners in some cases but they have disadvantages that explain why they didn't see wide use in colonial America. First, they are heavily dependent on the landscape and wind. Hills, valleys, strong adverse winds will all render them inoperable. Furthermore, they are not suitable for urban settings or river crossings where ambient noise will drown the signal. Mad respect though. Great video

[@testdummymedia]

These are decent points about the technical characteristics! To be clear, I do think there are efficiency and suitability concerns (Carringtons book describes the placement of drums along rivers and usage based on time of day). The broader point still follows though that political decisions suppressed some mediums and augments others, not that you were directly disagreeing with that. Glad you enjoyed :)

[@diskordant3843]

I remember learning semaphore with flags in boy scouts which is basically identical in concept to that first telegraph. Only context that I can remember learning is using it to communicate between ships at sea, would've been cool to have a bit more background on these other types of non-electric telecommunication and reminds me that I wanted to try to become a merit badge counselor maybe I will look into that again. . . Anyway great video I like the improved setup and felt invested the whole way through. Only thing is that even though I am subscribed and have watched your past content, I feel like I am rediscovering your channel again because the name "Dummy" just doesn't stick well in my mind. Maybe you changed your pfp too and that had an impact?

[@killingtimeitself]

the channel used to be titled "test dummy" and the PFP was a test dummy, the branding was definitely more memorable in the past, though now it's more personable, so.

[@testdummymedia]

I’m receptive to comments like these (you’re not the first to note that Dummy isn’t memorable) but I also like it a lot so that’s been annoying from a decision-making perspective lol

[@jessamynthelibrarian]

You're welcome!

[@testdummymedia]

Ahh! Your help was so appreciated :)

[@str8andalert]

Opened the video because I love your content. Although I'm afraid that the public unfamiliar with your content won't click on the video about the relics of the past such as telegraphs. May I suggest you to change the name of the video to reach a larger audience. Great video as always anyways! And please forgive my arrogance.

[@testdummymedia]

Hey! Glad to hear you love my stuff :) this one was more for me than the algorithm - if you’ve got any brilliant title ideas feel free to let me know

[@snakeyman5560]

What happened to your vid on conservative amazon?

[@testdummymedia]

Hey! I’m working on making a new niche for the channel - I’ve unlisted many of my old videos to reflect the increasing quality of my content as well as my new focus on tech/media theory and criticism

[@artieghosh529]

i don't know how you exercised so much restraint against making more explicit connections to how power and money operate in The Media today lollll but one of my biggest takeways is how much education has failed us by not identifying the political motivations behind the development of new media. grrrr angry (great video i really appreciated all the research)

[@testdummymedia]

More apathy than restraint teeheeeeee Will I ever make a video about the media today? Who knows, I’m tired, let’s talk about the Telegraph

[@killingtimeitself]

"you ever wonder how you would communicate without electricity?" Light signals :) edit 1: media is just the generic to medium, a medium is a specific form of media. Using the definition of medium of "referring to a material" this makes a lot of sense, light moves at a certain speed through a given medium. But it's speed varies across different media (although normally we would just say mediums) edit 2: this one is just a little fun fact, but up until the early oughts when the internet started to get reasonably fast, we still actually used antiquated means of communication, notably sneakernet, because throwing a pile of hdds in a shoebox in the back of a car and sending it to the building where it was needed was actually just faster than using the internet, and we still even do this to this day. I believe backblaze will ship you a hdd containing your file backups if you request it. Amazon does it using semi trucks now.

[@testdummymedia]

Edit 2 was useful information - didn’t know about the usage of physical drives in this manner

[@killingtimeitself]

@@testdummymedia it's really well known in the IT sysadmin/computer enthusiast space, and there are even a few jokes around it. There is a standard protocol for moving data using pigeons (there is probably also one for sneakernet tbh, i havent looked) And there is also a similar standard for DHCP address assignment using clothespins. TL;DR is how do you effectively and reliably assign unique addresses (from a limited table of them) manually but also in a fully decentralized fashion. And they ended up using physical IP tokens for the individual persons to hold onto while allotted that IP. computer scientists get up to a little bit too much fun sometimes lol.