Today, more and more people are learning the history lessons of telecomm all over again. Managers, financiers, investors and individuals - none seem to understand the ways in which telecom tech- nology has been built upon a few basic principles - principles that today are being used in more and more complex, even recombinant ways but still using those same basic principles. Much of what is appearing as "High Technology" today might even be called a "shell game." All sorts of newcomers to the art are paying the cost of learning again, against Santayana's sage advice.

...But few have learned since then, and more daily arrive to find out from hard experience and lost effort the underlying wisdom of WIRED's statement.

I've been privileged to work on the fringe of many historic entities of telecommunications. What I eventually learned about Cornwall steered us to go directly to the source, and so...

Just on the other side of this rather desolate appearing area, a scant half dozen miles across Mount's Bay lies the Lizard Peninsula of England, a (summertime) semi-tropical land favored by hikers and divers. The shores and lands of Mount's Bay have seen and continue to see telecom history made. Here are websites to a few of the places we saw on this "Telecom Vacation of a Lifetime:"

Penzance. Largest town of Cornwall; scene of the famous Gilbert & Sullivan comic opera: