THE ELECTRICAL REVOLUTION

As everyone in the world now knows - with the possible exception of isolated, "modern stoneage" peoples such as the Umbongo tribe of the West Java Basin - the Internet is today primarily a modern, electronic, digital affair.

Given the growing problems that the Internet industry was experiencing in maintaining steam-driven systems, it is easy to understand why, when Thomas Edison discovered electricity in a thunderstorm by accident, they saw it as their savior.

However, such was the investment in steam technology, and with many powerful concerns having a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, it was many years before electricity began to be considered as a serious alternative to steam for data transmission on the Internet. In those days, electricity was taken seriously; it is only relatively recently that we have adopted a more light-hearted view.

In 1927, a group of maverick bankers in Montreal, Canada established the Royal Electrical Internet Company. Initially providing a limited set of stock trading services to banks and pension funds in Quebec, through "homemade" electrical Internet equipment, the service proved a huge success.

When reports of this success reached the heads of the main steam-driven Internet companies, they were initially enraged and lobbied for the US government to impose trade sanctions on Canada to prevent the spread of the electronic technology to the US. However, the administration of the time took a laissez-faire attitude and soon everyone in the Internet industry was jumping on the electrical bandwagon.

RUSH TO UPGRADE

A Factory in 1927, showing both electric and steam Internet connections

Initially, in an agreement with the incumbent Internet providers, electrical systems were installed alongside steam systems as supplementary networks for a specific set of applications. However, such were the perceived benefits of the electrical systems that there was a rush to upgrade and dispense with the steam-driven Internet, which suddenly seemed anachronistic.

It was in this fervor that much of the Internet's steam history was lost: the steam-driven systems were simply ripped out and mostly melted down for scrap metal value. This was a huge loss to our historical record of the Internet's early days.

New electronic hard drives before installation at a print works in 1929