Fictional story: The Brass Network: Victorian Steam-Powered Internet

What if the Victorians had invented the internet using steam?

In 1847, brilliant engineer Percival Blackwood discovered that steam pressure variations could encode binary information.

By modulating coal-fired boiler outputs through precisely calibrated copper valves, he created the first digital packets transmitted through

existing gas pipe networks across London's underground infrastructure.

The Brass Network operated on ingenious pressure protocols.

Messages were converted into steam pulses: high pressure represented binary ones, low pressure zeros.

Relay stations every half-mile boosted signals using coal furnaces.

Telegraph operators became steam packet engineers, monitoring boiler temperatures and pressure readings to ensure data integrity across the

copper pipeline superhighway.

By 1855, the Steam Web connected major British cities.

Users accessed the network through neighborhood 'Steam Terminals' - brass contraptions resembling pipe organs.

Typing on mechanical keyboards triggered valve sequences, encoding letters into pressure patterns.

Popular applications included steam-mail, pressure-powered stock tickers, and even primitive social networking through shared boiler chatrooms.

The Brass Network's downfall came with the Great Steam Crash of 1858.

A massive boiler explosion in Manchester caused cascading pressure failures across Britain.

The network collapsed within hours, taking decades of accumulated steam-data with it.

Modern engineers still study Victorian pressure-encoding techniques, wondering what our world might have looked like with coal-powered computing.