please empty your brain below
Strictly speaking the British end of the transatlantic cables land in Cornwall (or possibly Somerset), and then use different fibres across the country to get to Telehouse and its ilk.

I used to have to make occasional visits in my last job - it's a maze of a place inside, with massive freight lifts, lots of individually locked apparatus rooms and the occasional bewildered telecoms engineer. Also quite a nice view, which was a surprise given how few windows it appears to have and how few people actually work there.

martin | 23.08.20 - 7:34 a.m. | #

Having walked that bit of the Thames Path just a fortnight ago I had totally failed to see all those signs of the meridian, even missing the big one at Brunswick Wharf right next to the Jubilee Line boat replacement sign that I did see (and thought it is a long way from the Jubilee Line). Can you post your blogs before I do my trips please...

davews | 23.08.20 - 9:33 a.m. | #

I particularly enjoyed today's informative links, particularly the Brunswick Hotel ones. You learn something new every day with DG!

Dave | 23.08.20 - 9:38 a.m. | #

If there was an open enough space for someone to put up markers on each meridian within sight of each other, ideally on the same latitude, where could it be? Maybe a question for later in this series.

IIRC the Brunswick one is out of the way due to temporary Thames Path closures, or at least last time I tried.

toby | 23.08.20 - 10:31 a.m. | #

That's an interesting colour of cycle lane, I'm surprised that there's no further comment on it not being blue.

Jamesthegill | 23.08.20 - 10:40 a.m. | #

I've been puzzled by that 'Jubilee line replacement boat services' notice for ages but Googling it has failed to find anything.Was it a temporary arrangement when the extension work overran?

dg writes: No, it's from 2009.

Andrew S | 23.08.20 - 11:52 a.m. | #

Arbitrary lines like meridians fascinate many people. We can benefit from the fact that DG evidently shares that fascination, and makes them a frequent topic of his blog.

By the way, meridians converge at the poles, so it is possible for polar explorers to stand on all the meridians at once.

Malcolm | 23.08.20 - 12:07 p.m. | #

A few years ago a laser beam was installed at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, to project a beam along the meridian line after dark. Although I never went north of the river to see how visible it might have been to anyone looking to follow its line at ground level, seeing it from the Greenwich side certainly gave the impression it would've provided a clear marker.
Unfortunately I believe the light was taken out of use when building developments on the north side were going to be directly in its path.

RogerW | 23.08.20 - 12:49 p.m. | #

The laser was installed in 1999 and is still shining as far as I know, information and some good photos of it here especially of it spilling on to Elektron Tower.

Wikipedia has one line in relation to the Jubliee Line sign. On the north bank the Reuters pier was used, but that was removed a few years ago and the service stopped long before that.

James | 24.08.20 - 3:28 a.m. | #

Hi DG - just a point of correction. LINX didn't start off as the home of PIPEX. I should know, I was there (and also spent many days and nights working at Telehouse in the early 90s - mostly troubleshooting connectivity issues). I used to work for BT - building their first UK and European fixed Internet service, and it was when we were building it that Keith Mitchell from PIPEX approached us to interconnect at Telehouse, which is where several ISPs had points of presence (POPs). LINX was a shared facility, we all shared it very informally - a great example in history of engineers with a passion collaborating with each other before the thing became too important for the the nation, and eventually the world. Fond memories of those days crawling under the floor void at Telehouse (underneath the LINX rack) trying to trace the transatlantic cables into our own routers and switches; so easy to knock out stuff accidentally - no security or anything. Everything exposed in shared "colocation" rooms there. It was the spirit of technical cooperation that kept everything running!

Jag | Homepage | 27.08.20 - 8:56 p.m. | #











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