The story of Winsted Lake’s submarine cable

©Mark Ollig


One day, while looking through a box of old photos and newspapers, I came across an event which happened on (and under) Winsted Lake during the late 1960s.

A little more than one-half mile of submarine (marine copper-paired) cable was placed along the bottom of the lake by the local telephone company to provide telephone service for new homes being built on the east side of the lake.

This event took place years before cellular telephones arrived on the scene; it was a time when a telephone line needed to be physically hard-wired/spliced to a pair of copper wires.

Why install a submarine cable?

It was decided this would be the fastest way to get phone service to the east end of the lake. It was also thought the marine cable would operate reliably under water until a future telephone cable could be trenched into the ground going around the lake.

The beginning of the submarine cable installation took place near the east end of McLeod Avenue and the corner of Kingsley Street.

Three telephone company employees, and a cable reel stand holding a large wooden reel of submarine cable, were positioned in a pontoon boat and ready to go.

“When we first loaded the cable reel onto the pontoon, we thought it was going to sink! The reel had to be perfectly centered on the pontoon, so it didn’t tip over,” recalled Tom Ollig, who was one of the three people on the pontoon that day.

The telephone crew guided the pontoon as they slowly made their way across Winsted’s most famous body of water, traveling west to east.

First, carefully pulled off the reel by hand, the submarine cable was prepared to be lowered into the water.

“Another concern was making sure the submarine cable was weighted down correctly, so it didn’t float to the top of the water,” Tom added.

Heavy steel bolts were securely strapped onto the submarine cable every 5 to 10 feet, before being gently released into the murky depths (about 12 feet) of the lake.

The telephone crew successfully lowered the submarine cable across the lake.

The west end of the submarine cable was trenched underground to a telephone enclosure fastened to a pole located about 40 feet from the lake. Its copper pairs were spliced to dedicated copper pairs of an aerial telephone cable, which went to the telephone office.

The east side of the submarine cable was located near the new homes being built. This side of the cable terminated in an above-ground pedestal enclosure about 50 feet from the shoreline.

New phone lines from the submarine cable were spliced to the copper pairs of the smaller “drop cables” trenched underground to the new homes.

“I remember cutting in the new phone lines using the submarine copper cable pairs for Jerry Sterner and Jack Littfin,” said Mike Ollig, who recently reminisced about it with me.

For many years, this submarine cable provided reliable telecommunications service from the telephone company’s downtown central office to the subscribers located on the east side of the lake.

I would venture to say, the successful installation and use of a submarine cable across the lake for providing telephone service was a historic first for Winsted.

However, as we know, nothing lasts forever.

At the start of the 1980s, some of the submarine cable’s copper wire pairs had begun to fail, and there was concern about the remaining good spares.

And so, during the mid-1980s, the local telephone company installed a new underground telephone cable around the lake to replace the aging submarine cable.

I suspect a few of you are wondering about the fate of the abandoned submarine cable on the bottom of Winsted Lake.

After disconnecting both ends of the submarine cable, we (I was working at the telephone company) attached the east end to our trusty Ditch Witch tractor/trencher and slowly removed (pulled) it from the lake.

The trencher drove in an easterly direction until the entire length of previously submerged submarine cable was out of the water and lying on the ground.

We rolled up the old submarine cable (with assistance from a John Deere tractor) onto a large cable reel and transferred it to a cable trailer, where it was driven to and stored inside the telephone company’s warehouse.

The submarine cable was later recycled for its copper.

Today, the improved construction of submarine cables (using fiber-optic pairs) has given them an average lifespan of 25 years.

Currently, more than 450 fiber-optic submarine cables, with a combined length of 746,000 miles, are on the world’s ocean floors, providing internet, voice, video, and data communication services to nearly every continent.

The Winsted Telephone Co. pontoon crew preparing to lay submarine cable across Winsted Lake.
 From left-to-to-right: Frank Roufs, James Ollig, and Tom Ollig. (1968)

‘Routine test’ crashes Facebook

©Mark Ollig

“Sorry, something went wrong,” this is the greeting many of us observed while attempting to access Facebook early the morning of Nov. 12.

Facebook, its WhatsApp for Android users, and its Instagram photo and video sharing service were all unavailable – Facebook’s main website had crashed.

So, what did many of us do? We went to our other social media platform to tell everyone our Facebook was down and see if it was down for others, as well.

When I logged into Twitter, I noted “#Facebookdown” was trending, and many were messaging their displeasure using memes, GIFs, videos, photos, and text.

The website, https://downdetector.com collects the status of internet sites in real-time and provides reports on outages and service interruptions.

Downdetector is operated by Ookla, which, according to its website banner, “is the global leader in internet testing, data, and analysis.”

Downdetector’s main webpage lists the status of more than 100 of the most popular websites, including Facebook, Google, YouTube, Gmail, AOL, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, AT&T, PayPal, and Amazon.

Each website is shown with its trademark icon, and has a clickable link for viewing its current operating status.

A search feature on the upper right-hand corner of the website’s banner bar will display statistics of other sites and internet service providers by typing in the name and pressing enter.

The morning of Nov. 12, when I could not log into Facebook, I went to Downdetector’s webpage, clicked the Facebook icon, and saw a graph displaying its operating status for the last 24 hours. It confirmed problems being reported.

Facebook’s total outage was at 47 percent for users worldwide; 35 percent reported login problems, and 16 percent cited issues using their Facebook app.

Downdetector’s Facebook outage map showed most of the central and eastern US out of service, including parts of Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Peru.

Meanwhile, on Twitter, users were busy posting comments, such as “The only good thing about Facebook being down? Twitter gets with everybody tweeting about it,” posted @Jezahb.

Others, like @QueenLisaBaily, posted a screengrab with the “Sorry, something went wrong” Facebook message from their computer.

“Alright, everyone, #Facebookdown, so it’s time to actually work,” posted @idnarB_eeL_03.

“Why Twitter is better than Facebook. When Twitter is down, people don’t go running to Facebook to find out what happened,” messaged @ignatzz,

Humor was included with many of the #Facebookdown tweets: “And but for a brief moment, our brains began growing new cells and families could speak again,” said @bwithrow.

Another amusing Twitter post showed a GIF with a young man heavily breathing into a paper bag, with the message, “Facebook is down! Everyone stay calm!” by @SooziiQ2.

“Yes, I am one of those who immediately went to Twitter to figure out if I was the only one whose Facebook wasn’t working,” tweeted @sam_morrow14.

Twitter user, @LynwoodCarmich1, posted a GIF of a smiling Vladimir Putin.

I, too, posted a screengrab of the Facebook outage map of North America from my computer. I used Windows 10 MS Paint to point out my location with an arrow and the word, “Me!”, over Minnesota.

For me, Facebook was down for about an hour, and within a couple of hours, most of North America was able to access Facebook.

A spokesperson from Facebook released this statement about the outage, “Earlier today, a routine test caused users to have trouble accessing or posting to all Facebook services, including WhatsApp and Instagram. We quickly investigated and restored access for everyone. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.”

Facebook did not describe what the “routine test” was about.

The last time Facebook suffered a major crash was Sept. 28, 2015, which, oddly, was also a Monday.

Just a thought: I wonder if Facebook runs their routine tests Mondays.

The 2015 crash was triggered because Facebook’s Internet address would not load, thus causing it to be inaccessible for more than 1 billion computers and smart device-users worldwide.

As happened four years ago, this past Monday, thousands of Facebook users took to Twitter to commiserate and post their displeasure – yes, misery does love company.

The following paragraph is how I envision legendary news reporter Walter Cronkite broadcasting the Facebook outage.

“Good evening from the CBS News Control Center in New York. This is Walter Cronkite reporting. We are receiving printed teletype bulletins into our newsroom confirming the social media site, Facebook, is unreachable by its internet patrons. We will bring you the latest updates as we receive them.”

And that’s the way it is. Have a good week.

The screengrab from my computer indicating I, too, was suffering from the Facebook outage.

Hey, universe, we’ll leave the light on for you

©Mark Ollig


Earth scientists may someday turn on a high-powered megawatt-class laser beam pointed towards deep space.

James Clark, a graduate student of MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, wrote a feasibility study in the Astrophysical Journal, where he describes using a laser beam as a “planetary beacon,” which could be seen 20,000 light-years away.

Clark is also the author of a new MIT report.

The MIT report/study proposes how “laser technology on Earth, could, in principle, be fashioned into something of a planetary porch light.”

Transmitting a 1- to 2-megawatt laser beam strong enough not to be obscured by the sun’s radiation and seen light-years away would require a telescope nearly 148 feet in diameter.

Clark suggests “extraterrestrial astronomers” living on planets in the neighborhood of Proxima Centauri (the nearest star to Earth), would be able to detect a linear laser beam originating from Earth.

I assume an extraterrestrial astronomer; who just happened to be looking at the Milky Way Galaxy through a telescope, might wonder what the straight line of light was all about.

Just an FYI: as of 2017, the known universe contains at least 2 trillion galaxies.

Do we really want to send a high-powered laser beam into outer space to signal extraterrestrial intelligence, and let them know where we are located?

What if this guiding light/laser beam is seen by a technically-advanced civilization that decides to pay us an interplanetary visit?

I am reminded of a few science fiction movies where aliens come to visit us.

As I recall, the aliens (except for the Vulcans) were not very friendly to the folks living on Earth.

February 2017, NASA announced its Spitzer Space Telescope discovered a star 40 light-years (235 trillion miles) away in the constellation Aquarius.

This star has seven exoplanets orbiting it.

This exoplanetary system is called TRAPPIST-1, and is named for The Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope, located in Chile.

Three of the exoplanets were determined to have the potential to support life.

March 30, 2021, NASA is scheduled to launch the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to replace the aging Hubble Telescope, launched in 1990.

The JWST is a new and much more powerful telescope than the Hubble. It will be able to gather in-depth information about the exoplanets atmospheres, including carbon dioxide, methane, water, and oxygen.

It has been suggested, if astronomers on Earth ever did detect a light-signal originating from one of these three planets, we could use a high-powered mega-watt laser to send controlled pulses of light – a visual Morse code, or signal lamp – if you will, to the exoplanet.

Earth would send a message, hope it would be understood, and then wait for a message to be sent back.

What will be the message Earth sends to intelligent lifeforms living on another planet?

Shouldn’t we, at this stage of our social and technological development, consider the consequences of contacting what is likely a more advanced and possibly aggressive extraterrestrial civilization?

Then again, maybe the extraterrestrials will only want to learn how we brew our coffee.

“If we were to successfully close a handshake and start to communicate, we could flash a message, at a data rate of about a few hundred bits per second, which would get there in just a few years,” said James Clark.

“I’m sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It’s just been too intelligent to come here,” said science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke in 1996.

On the other hand, maybe they are intelligent enough to first send an information-gathering space probe through our solar system.

Last October, scientists, using the PANN-STARRS 1 space telescope on Mount Haleakala in Maui, HI, identified an unusual cigar-shaped object which was not a comet, meteor, or asteroid.

The one-quarter-mile-long space object traveled through our solar system and passed by the Earth at speeds of up to 196,000 miles per hour.

The object was named ‘Oumuamua, meaning messenger, or scout, in Hawaiian.

‘Oumuamua is the first object of interstellar origin to be observed in our solar system.

Nov. 1, researchers at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics released a five-page paper about ‘Oumuamua.

The paper surprisingly reveals “the possibility that it [the space object] might be a ‘light sail’ of artificial origin.”

A light sail/solar sail would be used to gather solar energy to power . . . what?

Harvard’s astronomy department’s chair, Avi Loeb, suggested the object is a light sail to propel an interstellar traveling alien spacecraft using solar energy.

“Considering an artificial origin, one possibility is that ‘Oumuamua is a light sail, floating in interstellar space as debris from advanced technological equipment,” according to the Harvard paper.

I have read the Harvard paper, and it shows many mathematical and scientific formulas to support its claims that the space object is of artificial origin.

The Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics paper can be read at https://arxiv.org/pdf/1810.11490.pdf.

Since ‘Oumuamua has traveled beyond our solar system, it is now too far away for telescopes to photograph it.

‘Oumuamua has also voyaged beyond the range of our space rockets’ ability to chase it down.

For now, we patiently observe space using our current telescopes, and wait until the JWST is available in 2021.

Someday, another ‘Oumuamua will be seen. Hopefully, scientists will have the technologies needed to understand the composition, purpose, and origin of that interstellar visitor.

We also continue to debate whether Earth should send a high-powered laser beam into outer space to signal any extraterrestrial intelligence of our existence.

Like the Motel 6 commercial, where they leave the light on for us, Earth may soon be leaving its light on for the universe.

Permission to use photo granted by MIT News

I used MS Paint and greatly added to a couple of  NASA photos

‘The Mark of Zettabyte’

©Mark Ollig


I love autumn. It’s my favorite time of year; the only problem is, it doesn’t last long enough.

Looking out the window next to my writing desk, I see trees along the street boulevard showing off their vibrant late-fall colors of red, gold, and yellow leaves.

So, relax and be comfortably seated; perhaps you’re already sipping on a satisfying light-roast or latté as we continue with today’s topic.

Being this is a “Bits and Bytes” column, I need to briefly address them.

One bit (binary digit) is the smallest unit of data used in a computer. One bit has a single binary value of either 0 or 1.

One unit of digital information consists of eight bits.

Eight bits is equal to one byte. See? This binary stuff is easy-peasy.

And for those of you who like to fish; four bits equals a nibble, but we needn’t concern ourselves with nibbles today.

Ok, let’s examine a zettabyte.

Zettabyte begins with a Z, and may remind people of the courageous vigilante from the movie, “The Mark of Zorro.”

For today’s column, I will play the carefree street writer in “The Mark of Zettabyte.”

To wrap our heads around a zettabyte, let’s review how it compares to today’s better-known data expressions.

Some of you may have a smartphone with 31 gigabytes (GB) of data storage like mine. 1 GB equals one billion bytes.

It would take 1,000,000,000,000 (trillion) GB’s to equal one zettabyte.

OK, since you asked, here’s another one: 1 zettabyte equals 1,000,000,000,000,000 (quadrillion) megabytes (MB).

Consider the internal hard drive on a computer with its storage capacity of 1 or 2 terabytes.

Now, consider this: 1 zettabyte (ZB) equals 1,000,000,000 (billion) terabytes (TB).

And now, for the Lollapalooza with 21 zeroes behind it: one zettabyte equals 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (sextillion) bytes (SB).

I hear one of my readers thinking, “Why is Mark throwing out all these numbers with lots of zeroes?"

From time to time, I’ll include some background information before delivering the goods; similar to setting out some appetizers before bringing the main course to the dinner table.

Hold on, folks, the main course is now being brought out.

The Feb. 6, 2012, Bits & Bytes column reviewed the Cisco Live 2012 conference in London. “Acceleration from Zero to Zetta,” was Cisco’s keynote address topic.

“We are fast entering the zettabyte era,” said Padmasree Warrior, Cisco senior vice president of engineering and chief technology officer.

Warrior said we are undergoing a “data deluge and technology transformation.”

I agreed then, and I still do today.

With the growing number of people using smartdevices, and the rising number of Internet of Things (IoT) smart-sensors collecting, sharing, and storing mountains of data in the clouds of the internet, we have indeed entered a data tidal wave.

As we know, the internet is a collection of public (and private) networks containing data centers and communication facilities and is commonly called the cloud.

Data centers within the cloud need to expand their capacity; they are evolving into hyperscale data centers.

Today, there are more than 400 hyperscale data centers collaborating with hundreds of thousands of computing and storage servers operating over high-speed networks.

Google, Facebook, Amazon, eBay, PayPal, and others use hyperscale data centers.

Buildings containing hyperscale data centers average over one-half million square feet.

The US has the highest number of hyperscale data centers, followed by China.

By 2020, it is estimated there will be 500 hyperscale data centers, worldwide.

Most data centers (clouds) are buildings with rooms filled with tall cabinet bays containing shelves equipped with printed wiring cards, electronic component modules, fiber-optic and power cabling, routers, software, switches, computers, and cooling systems.

Double and/or triple commercial power redundancy, along with power generator backup systems are available within the data centers.

Data from one cloud is sometimes distributed to other clouds over facilities, such as copper and fiber-optic cables, wireless communication towers, and Earth-orbiting satellites; ultimately communicating with computing devices and IoT.

Two years ago, a noteworthy event occurred.

September 2016, global internet data center traffic surpassed the zettabyte threshold.

Here is one way to visualize a zettabyte: “If each gigabyte in a zettabyte was a brick, 258 Great Walls of China could be built,” wrote Taru Khurna, a research analyst with Cisco.

This year in North America, the total amount of cloud data traffic is estimated to be 3.8 zettabytes, according to research studies conducted by Statista.

The rest of the world will create 3.9 zettabytes, which brings the total global cloud data traffic to 7.7 zettabytes.

In 2021, nearly 94 percent of all data and computer programming tasks will be processed by cloud data centers, according to Cisco.

“Driven by the Internet of Things, the total amount of data created (not necessarily stored) by every device will reach 847 ZB [Zettabytes] per year by 2021,” predicts Cisco’s Global Cloud Index 2016-21 White Paper report.

Soon, instead of talking about zettabytes, I’ll need to write a column about yottabytes.

Did you know one yottabyte is equal to the data contained in 250 trillion compact DVD discs?

You’re right; I won’t get started on yottabytes today.

Eventually, I’ll need to get with the times and rename my column “Zettabytes and Yottabytes.”