I am utterly perplexed by this advertisement. Besides the obvious irony that for smokers sixty is more likely the beginning of the end, can someone please explain what point this ad is trying to get across? “It always has stopped raining”? Is that a proper sentence? It sounds like someone started with a sentence like “It felt like an eternity before the rain stopped.” then used google to translate it into french, then german then chinese then back into english again.
It always has stopped raining
Life begins at sixty
Chesterfield
They Satisfy
Neal Stephenson
wrote a huge travelogue for Wired in 1995 where he followed the progress of a new world girding fiber optic network being constructed. Along the way explores every aspect of the process and history behind laying communications cables underwater. It is a wonderfully interesting read and I highly recommend it.


Thrills in Laying Deep-Sea Cable Across the Atlantic
WHILE, 57 years ago the world noted the fact that the steamship “Great Eastern” had completed its memorable work of connecting America with Europe by the first successful Atlantic telegraphic cable, the recent landing on the south shore of Long Island of a new line of communication attracted little attention.
Nevertheless, this latest undertaking marked the closer binding together of the New World and the Old, for, despite the advent of the wireless and the establish-ment of powerful radio stations, which are capable of spanning vast terrestrial distances, the fact remains that this newer method of electrical intercourse has not scrapped the older order of long-range telegraphy.
Traffic over the submarine cables linking North America with Europe has increased fourfold in the last decade, and yet, until recently, nothing has been done within that period to add to these undersea nerves of communication. The cost of the new cable, representing the present height of scientific knowledge concerning such things, has been put at $15,000,000; and to get it properly in place on the sea bed has required the service of specially constructed craft manned largely by a crew trained for that hazardous and extremely exacting work.
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