We are all used to communication towers and masts looking dull or unattractive. Fortunately, in history there were - and are - interesting, unusual examples of these, in general, utilitarian structures. We have compiled a small selection of communication towers that we found particularly noteworthy.

Stockholm tower

Let's start with the "trump card" - the most unusual and oldest design in our selection. To call it a "tower" even the language does not turn. In 1887, a square-section tower was built from steel trusses in Stockholm. With turrets in the corners, flagpoles and decorations around the perimeter - beauty!

The tower looked especially magical in winter, when the wires were iced over:

In 1913, the tower ceased to be a telephone hub, but they did not demolish it and left it as a city landmark. Unfortunately, exactly 40 years later, a fire broke out in the building, and the tower had to be dismantled.

microwave network

In 1948, the American company AT&T launched an expensive project to create a network of microwave communication towers. In 1951, a network of 107 towers was put into operation. For the first time, it was possible to make phone calls throughout the country and transmit TV signals exclusively "over the air", without using wired networks. The trumpets of their antennas are somewhat reminiscent of gramophones or designer speakers built according to the reverse horn scheme.

However, the network was later abandoned because microwave radio relay communications were replaced by optical fiber. The fate of the towers has developed in different ways: some are rusting idle, others have been sawn up for scrap, some are used to organize communications by smaller companies; some towers are used by local residents for their needs.

Wardenclyffe tower

Nikola Tesla was a genius, and probably still underestimated. It may not have been without a dose of madness. Perhaps, if investors had not let him down, he could go down in history as a person who changed the life of all mankind. But now we can only guess about it.

In 1901, Tesla began construction of the Wardenclyffe Tower, which was to form the basis of the transatlantic communication line. And at the same time, with its help, Tesla wanted to prove the fundamental possibility of wireless transmission of electricity - the inventor dreamed of creating a worldwide system for the transmission of electricity, broadcasting and radio communications. Alas, his ambitions conflicted with the business interests of his own investors, so Tesla simply stopped giving money to continue the project, which had to be closed in 1905.

The tower was built next to Tesla's laboratory:

Alas, the brainchild of a genius has not survived to this day - the tower was dismantled in 1917.

three-horned giant

And this tower is alive and well, actively used and beneficial. The 298-meter-high structure was erected on a hill in San Francisco. It was built in 1973 and is still used for television and radio broadcasts. Until 2017, the Sutro tower was the tallest architectural object in the city.

By clicking on this picture, a full-size photo will open:

View of San Francisco from the tower:

in shallow water

Once upon a time, the US Air Force built several radio relay towers in the Gulf of Mexico.

Right at the bottom, in shallow water, steel tripods were mounted on concrete bases, and slender antenna masts with equipment platforms rise above the water, on which a small house will fit. A very unusual sight is an openwork mast sticking out in the middle of the sea.

As it usually happens, the development of communication technologies has made the towers unnecessary, and today the military does not know what to do with them: either cut them down, or flood them, or leave them as they are. It is curious that over the years of its existence, the antennas have turned into a kind of artificial reefs with their tiny ecosystems, and they were chosen by lovers of sea fishing and diving, who even filed a petition so that the towers would not be destroyed.

Before the radio

And at the end of our selection, we want to talk about the invention of two Frenchmen, the Chappe brothers. In 1792, they demonstrated the so-called "semaphore" - a small tower with a rotating transverse bar, at the ends of which there were also rotating bars. The Chappe brothers proposed to encode the letters and numbers of the alphabet using different positions of the bar and slats.

It was necessary to turn the bars and the bar manually. Today, all this looks wildly slow and inconvenient, besides, such a system had a serious drawback: it was entirely dependent on the weather and time of day. But at the end of the 18th century, it was an awesome breakthrough - short messages could be transmitted between cities along a chain of towers in about 20 minutes.

And by the middle of the 19th century, all types of optical telegraphs - including options that used light signals - were supplanted by an electric, wired telegraph. And on some architectural monuments, turrets are still preserved, on which semaphore towers used to stand. For example, on the roof of the Winter Palace.

Source: habr.com