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| Submarine Cable Map |
An animated map of all the submarine cables encircling our globe. This screenshot doesn't capture the pulsing flow of data that the original shows, but it's easy enough to insert in this blog. Embedding the original is beyond my reach today.
I'm looking at this map and I discover something curious. In this view we have Australia at the bottom right and Arabia at the upper left. The white line connecting the two is the Oman-Australia Cable (OAC). Okay, fine, but what's that branch that takes off from the middle of that line heading northeast to the middle of the ocean? What's out there? Some secret military installation? A mad scientist's lair? Nothing so interesting, just the Cocos Islands, another obscure island I had never heard of.
It got it's start in the undersea cable business early:
The islands were annexed by the British Empire in 1857. . . . In 1901 a telegraph cable station was established on Direction Island. Undersea cables went to Rodrigues, Mauritius, Batavia, Java and Fremantle, Western Australia. In 1910 a wireless station was established to communicate with passing ships. The cable station ceased operation in 1966. . . . The Oman Australia Cable, scheduled for 2021, will feature a branch to the Cocos Islands. -Wikipedia
There was a bit of excitement during WW1 during the Battle of Cocos, probably because it was a bit of a communications hub for the British Empire in the Indian Ocean. WW2 was much quieter.
Via Detroit Steve
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