Every so often, usually in the vast deserts of the American Southwest, a hiker or a backpacker will run across something puzzling: a ginormous concrete arrow, as much as seventy feet in length, just sitting in the middle of scrub-covered nowhere. What are these giant arrows? Some kind of surveying mark? Landing beacons for flying saucers? Earth's turn signals? No, it's...
the Transcontinental Air Mail Route.On August 20, 1920, the United States opened its first coast-to-coast airmail delivery route, just 60 years after the Pony Express closed up shop. There were no good aviation charts in those days, so pilots had to eyeball their way across the country using landmarks. This meant that flying in bad weather was difficult, and night flying was just about impossible.
The Postal Service solved the problem with the world's first ground-based civilian navigation system: a series of lit beacons that would extend from New York to San Francisco. Every ten miles, pilots would pass a bright yellow concrete arrow. Each arrow would be surmounted by a 51-foot steel tower and lit by a million-candlepower rotating beacon. (A generator shed at the tail of each arrow powered the beacon.) Now mail could get from the Atlantic to the Pacific not in a matter of weeks, but in just 30 hours or so.
Yesteryear's low tech solution for a new high tech era.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday October 16 2016, @03:05AM
The Pantelegraph was invented by the Italian physicist Giovanni Caselli. He introduced the first commercial telefax service between Paris and Lyon in 1865 [...]
The 1888 invention of the telautograph by Elisha Grey marked a further development in fax technology, allowing users to send signatures over long distances, thus allowing the verification of identification or ownership over long distances.
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fax#History [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday October 16 2016, @06:02AM
Yes, I did know the device existed but that doesn't mean you could just go down to the Western Union and actually use one.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday October 16 2016, @06:30AM
You had written "at that time, they didn't have fax [...] A [t]elegraph cannot transmit a signature" so it appeared that you didn't know. Fax machines weren't in every home and office like they are today, but they were in commercial use. Western Union, in particular, developed at least one--although not until 1948, which was after the beacons and arrows were completed.
http://massis.lcs.mit.edu/archives/technical/western-union-tech-review/03-1/p017.htm [mit.edu]
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday October 17 2016, @02:13AM
I can see the confusion, but I was talking about the practical use. "They" referred to people deciding to use the airmail service. The choice was telegraph or airmail. Only the latter could carry a signature. Fax later became a practical option, but I have little doubt there was legal uncertainty to the validity of a signature on a facsimile page for years after.