Trains, planes and telegraph lines.

[west]

@Solfius: I was under that impression too.

plus "clacks" sounds like "fax" so that'd make it a Pune or play on words

[Revanael]

Heliographs, at basic principles, are mirrors reflecting the sun for signalling purposes.

You can advance that a lot, but it still requires sunlight.

The discworld clacks are semaphore towers.

[Schme]

If that is what heliographs are, then they would be near useless in Cantr.

No, what I am talking about is telegraph lines.

Nygh.

[Schme]

Damned yankees......

*slaps schme in the face with a glove*

"How dare you, you piggish American! You do dishonor to your band of traitors to the British crown!

Sir, I challenge you to a bout of fistycuffs!"

[Schme]

Damned yankees......

The South will rise again!

Will not! Will not! Will not! Nah nah nah nah nah nah!

[The Industriallist]

Why would heliographs, or semaphores, or any such things be useless? I can tell you why telegraph lines would be useless, and impossibly expensive...

[Schme]

Why then?

[The Industriallist]

Because, assuming it's based on RL, you need a source of electricity to run a telegraph. DC. So either a dynamo or a battery. Making a battery in the most practical ways availible involves brining together two different metals and strong acid. Making this acid would involve copious amounts of glass or lead for equipment, plus sulpher (a non-existant resource, so it'll only appear on islands that no one has ever landed on by current policy.) and water.
If you use a dynamo, it burns copious amounts of coal or maybe gas to run a large, complex metal machine.

And most of this is a sustained expense you have to be prepeared to pay at any time for the system to be useful.

Now, to lay the lines...this'll take kilograms of drawn copper wire (taking a long time to make from a rare metal). Or if they feel really nice, just large quantities of copper. Plus, if you use poles, tens, or for long roads hundreds, of kilograms of wood.

Each station'll need a fairly complex device for sending and recieving.

And then you probably need someone monitering the recieving station at all times.

So...I overstated my case at useless...but a telegraph line would probably cost more to build than a car, and have a very large cost to use in cantrian economics. In addition to having every problem I can see of heliographs (or similar system)

[Schme]

You are quite right, I must agree with you.

However, I did note the fact that it would only make sense for it to be copiously expensive (to say the very least)

But supposing they could program it at an extremly unrealistically low price, we would all be on our way.

Why I think heliographs, or smoke signals or any other thing of such nature, is not the same, is that

How the hell do you make a mirror? Chemicals. And so you could make a battery just as easily.

How can you read a mirror message? You would have to have a universal set of symbols, which you would have learn.

You would not be able to send direct messages (everyone with a pie-o-graph would be able to see it)

You would not be able to send precise messages, or complex messages at all.

And there you have it.

[The Industriallist]

If a heliograph were implemented to simply allow you to, as an instant free action, send signals (events of two different types) to a target nearby town (Not unreasonable, though rather tortuous for the innocent bystanders) I fail to see your logic.

You can construct any number of different ways to convert a string of such signals into a meaningful message. Of course this has to be shared between sender and reciever in advance. For the masochist or person cheating with an outside program to do conversion you could just send binary ascii text, which certainly can contain any message you care to propose, of any complexity.

And what exactly do you think a telegraph does? They don't transmit words or letters. They simply transmit a current or lack of current, read (in the simplest form) by an electromagnet (which moves a metal bar to make the clicking sounds of the oldest telegraphs). This is no more or less information that a properly working heliograph provides, and much less than a semaphore. You still need a code of some form to make it mean anything...that's what Morse code was invented for.

As for privacy...it's true anyone can see your heliograph message. That shouldn't mean that they can necessarily figure out what it means to you.

Finally, there's no need for complex chemistry to make mirrors...silvered glass isn't required when your message is carried by the presence or absence of light glinting off your 'mirror', which is the principle of the heliograph. As Seko said, a polished iron shield would do fine, or a smaller piece of metal. Or in a pinch a good swordblade.

[Schme]

What I mean is that with morse code, you can send anything that can be written. Unless you want to re-create morse code for heliographs, well, it's going to take years.

As for binary, are you out of your mind?! Why would we even go into that? Crazy.

And might I add, no great empire has ever been built on heliograph.

As for highly polished steel or copper, sure, it could be done, but over miles and miles? What about weather? What about nightime?

With telegraph lines, none of that has to be taken into consideration.

I do maintain, however, that they would have to be exhorbadantly expensive.

[The Industriallist]

I don't know whether or not your claim about empires using the heliogaph is true, though I doubt that you do either.

Morse code won't work at all in cantr, because it uses pauses, which can't be done without finer subdivisions of time. Whatever data you send will be binary, assuming you can send two types of signal (if not it's next to useless). You wouldn't want to use ascii...probably just a 5-bit encoding or something with variable length characters (as morse uses), but it is inherently binary for either pseudo-telegaph or heliograph.

Weather and nighttime are not very problematic, as you can just signal with a torch or lantern...if it's too dark for a heligraph to signal, it's dark enough for a torch to show up for a very long way. Fog or something like that'll block you, admittedly.

Miles and miles...light glinting off a mirror in a known position is visible for a long way. You use towers so that you can extend the horizons. And for reference, with a telegraph, there's the possibility of needing repeating stations also, since the current is weaker over longer distances.

[Schme]

I took into account a repeating station. You see, seeing as a telegraph line must be connected all the way through, it would be wiser to build them were people are, so that you could send them messages or have them pass them along (or vice versa)

I was thinking some sort of repeater in each station. However, telegraph lines runing through desserts and such, I suppose, would be tricky, but I am sure you could get someone to take a year shift or so, if you paid them enough.

Heliographs, or any such thing as that, did indeed not run great empires, like the telegraph line.

They were used, but as I said, they cannot send complex messages, like the telegraph.

North American aboriginals were quite adept with smoke signals, but to say they used them to communicate complex messages would be folley.

As for pauses, you could simply put in "K" or some other symbol as substituete.

But what would be more practical would be just to type in a message (with words) into a box, much like a note, and just assume that it had been converted to morse (it would perhaps be more like some sort of wire connected fax machine than telegraph, but it would work much the same in way of transmiting.)

But in truth, I am not very good at working out with technicalities.

[TatteredShoeLace]

However, telegraph lines runing through desserts and such, I suppose, would be tricky, but I am sure you could get someone to take a year shift or so, if you paid them enough.

Desserts? Like Pudding? Oh man, a jello-graph!

[The Industriallist]

I took into account a repeating station. You see, seeing as a telegraph line must be connected all the way through, it would be wiser to build them were people are, so that you could send them messages or have them pass them along (or vice versa)

I was thinking some sort of repeater in each station. However, telegraph lines runing through desserts and such, I suppose, would be tricky, but I am sure you could get someone to take a year shift or so, if you paid them enough.

I dunno just how much distance you could get between stations...but on a road that stretched over the horizon from a high tower, you might need one. Between towns.

Heliographs, or any such thing as that, did indeed not run great empires, like the telegraph line.

You mean industriallized empires, as in britain?! That's not even remotely relevant to cantr scales. In cantr, any empire that stretches farther than you can see (past the edge of town) is pretty great. We have some decent vehicle technology in some places, but at best we're on a city-state level of civilization as a rule.

They were used, but as I said, they cannot send complex messages, like the telegraph.

As I just finished proving, they transmit exactly the same complexity and type of information.

North American aboriginals were quite adept with smoke signals, but to say they used them to communicate complex messages would be folley.

I doubt that they sent very complex messages. I don't even know how complex you could send with that and be sure of accuracy. But neither of us was talking about smoke signals...

As for pauses, you could simply put in "K" or some other symbol as substituete.

Do you not undestand that symbols aren't transmitted by telegraph? It's just one wire, either carrying or not carrying current. At best, you could have it carrying pulses of current in one of two directions (which would make one usable in cantr). But any symbols are interpreted from the coding. THEY AREN'T ACTUALLY IN THE TRANSMISSION!

But what would be more practical would be just to type in a message (with words) into a box, much like a note, and just assume that it had been converted to morse (it would perhaps be more like some sort of wire connected fax machine than telegraph, but it would work much the same in way of transmiting.)

Sure, if you want to grant massively complex electromechanical technology, you could do that. That's about what a teletype machine is, I think. But you don't need all that garbage...