The Basement

One of the things I like the most about these photos is the fact that the workers who cut &#38; drilled the walls to install the "new" cables/conduit actually made an effort to not destroy the old clippings on the wall. Sure, there's a place where it's clear they had to seam or otherwise plaster over one section, but for he most part it looks as if they kept it as-is.<p>This makes me happy. I've seen so many other cases where people doing their jobs totally ignore their surrounds and paint over, cut through, or destroy the things around them with nary more than a shrug and a "just doing my job".

"Turns out, he claims, “they used to print The Oregonian down here, way back.”<p>The pressmen, one imagines, worked day and night down here, working the lumbering machines, spitting out another edition of the day’s business."<p>I used to be in that industry. I don't think they printed this paper in the basement (at least not a newspaper). I've had experience getting even small printing machinery into a basement (that was not even as sub grade as this one). It's a big task. You have to either cut a whole in the floor or take it down a bilco type basement door. Generally it would be on reinforced first floors or possibly even above that on reinforced floors (where it could easily be craned into windows if necessary). Then you have the issue with paper down and up most importantly.<p>It's hard to say exactly based on the info provided in the article. If this was done by web it most certainly wouldn't be in a basement as you would need ceiling height in addition to size and weight of the equipment. And it wouldn't make any sense. Also, you have issues with humidity in basements that have an impact on printing inks and paper. And you would also have the rolls of paper most likely (or sheets once again hard to say w/o more details) to get in and out of the basement? What would be the reason that you would want to do all that extra work?

"100 years from now, when another one of you goes spelunking around this basement, that data, those bits, today’s moments, will likely be long, long gone."<p>Well said. Back then the images were pasted on real walls and it adds to the emotional appeal. And now the images are pasted on virtual walls (aka Facebook/desktops).<p>I always wondered this. The new technology is great in spreading the images wide (wide in the spacial plane - I can see what was there in that room, and I'm sitting here far far away. That is the beauty of new technology. ). But it fails to spread it deep (call it in an emotional plane).

I'm in the middle of reading "Tubes" by Andrew Blum, which is the story of how the Internet was physically built. MAE-East, PAIX, Ashburn, and all that.<p>The Kindle version is $1.99 right now. I paid $9.99 for it last week.<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Tubes-Journey-Center-Internet-ebook/dp/B006FOHWDI/" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Tubes-Journey-Center-Internet-ebook/dp...</a>

I guessed it was a newspaper shop before he got to the bit about the Oregonian. All the marks are in blue pencil, which was a common tool in graphic arts until the digital era. And because it's a big basement in an old building in the center of a big city, that to me says newspaper.

A non-sequitor of sorts - on the subject of Cables and Underground - if you have never read Jamie Zawinski's (jwz) Cable Story, it is one of the most fascinating real engineering reads I've ever read.<p>"What happens when a 230 kilovolt underground cable shorts out"<p><a href="http://www.jwz.org/blog/2002/11/engineering-pornography/" rel="nofollow">http://www.jwz.org/blog/2002/11/engineering-pornography/</a>

Really cool post. If you have ever been in a printing room while a press was operating, it's an amazing experience. It's crazy to think that through those small pipes more data is being passed - more variety, more volume - than was ever passed with all the cacophony of the press.

When something catches your eye on the Internet, do you pull out virtual scissors and paste the clipping to a virtual wall?

I wonder how secure that basement is. Someone going down there with a chainsaw could do a lot of damage.

Leads you to wonder where the 641a equivalent is in that building (or is it in the actual telco building nearby, which a lot of the fiber also runs through, with some additional fiber stubs from the exchange back to the carrier building)

I was expecting some archive.org advertisement at the end.

This is absolutely incredible. I don't have much more to say than that. Thanks for sharing.

I keep meaning to do an art walk like this.