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The clacks in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels is a network of semaphore towers stretching along the Sto Plains, into the Ramtops and across the Unnamed Continent to Genua. It was introduced in The Fifth Elephant, and has become the Discworld's first telecommunications network. While the system structure is that of a telegraph, elements of it are often described as similar to the Internet. A very similar real-life system of optical telegraphs existed in the real world before electronic telegraphy made it obsolete.
A typical clacks tower
A typical clacks tower is three storeys tall, made of wood, and probably looks like it was put together in a hurry, because it was. They tend to be eight miles apart.
The ground floor is a storeroom. The second contains an office, a kitchen and, in out-of-the-way towers, a bunkroom. The top floor contains the controls. Two chairs face identical control boards on either side, each connected to the panels on the opposite side. There is a keyboard, and levers and pedals. Sometimes entering a code will alter the configeration of the system, probably beneficially (but see Smoking GNU, below.)
History
The history of the clacks network was detailed in Going Postal. The invention was originally made by an artificer called Robert Dearheart, conducting experiments in an abandoned wizard's tower halfway between Ankh-Morpork and Sto Lat. The basic mechanism he came up with was a two-by-three array of wooden panels, with pulleys that could drop shutters over them, creating a code. A series of high towers, with one of these mechanisms on each side and someone ready to relay the codes, could send messages across at the speed of light. The panel also had a recess for a lamp, meaning messages could be sent at night.
Based on this he founded the Grand Trunk Company, which began creating a network of towers that would stretch across the continent. "High traffic" towers have more than six panels. The largest is the one on the huge hill in Ankh-Morpork called The Tump, which is the main junction between the city's clacks network (various city institutions, including the Guilds, and the Watch had installed small clacks towers on their buildings) and the Grand Trunk, the chain of towers that leads past Sto Lat, into Überwald, and from there to Genua. In the less civilised areas in the heart of the continent, they ran into problems, and most clacks towers in the Überwald area had fortified stone bases and, often, armed guards. The problem was particularly acute in Borogravia, where the towers were seen as an Abomination unto Nuggan, on the grounds that if messages were being sent through the air, prayers would get tangled up in them.
Because so much of the material being sent was confidential, the senders would put it in their own code before being given to the clacks operators. The operators were, therefore, often surprised if they received a message they understood, outside the Overhead (the messages from and about the network itself).
The Grand Trunk employed a lot of gargoyles, as they were exceptionally good at sitting and watching without getting bored.
The success of the clacks network resulted in a fad for semaphore of all types, and fashionable Morporkians began carrying signal flags with them, to send messages to friends on the other side of the room. This appears to have died out, although the City Watch has its own semaphore network, with a relay station on the roof of the Old Lemonade Factory (the Watch training school).
Dearheart, and his employees, continued to improve the network. As the network grew larger, activating the shutters directly became too complicated, so methods of automating the process were introduced. Punch cards, nicknamed jacquards, were designed that would send certain messages automatically. Sent messages were also automatically recorded on punch cards, kept in a metal drum. They even worked out a way of coding pictures.
Unfortunately, Dearheart and those like him were brilliant at engineering, but not finances. A consortium of financiers had been embezzeling from the company since it was set up. When it reached the point of collapse, they bought Dearheart and the others out with their own money.
Under the new management, the clacks network became more profitable, but less reliable. As the new owners didn't really understand the clacks the way the previous management had, they worked it until it broke. They maintained their monopoly by killing anyone attempting to set up another network, including Dearheart's son, John.
Clacks operators, therefore, could either keep working for a company that didn't really care about the clacks, or give up. Since the clacks tended to atract obsessive personalities, this was more than they could stand. One group, who had been working with John Dearheart before his death, set up an illegal clacks tower and used their knowledge of the system to send unauthorised messages in the Overhead. They worked out a way to send messages that would put unnecessary strain on the towers, putting them out of commission (in other words, the equivilent of a computer virus). They called themselves the Smoking GNU, from the clacks-jargon term for a really fast message. (The clacks system has also been cracked by Hex, after Ponder Stibbons connected it to the Unseen University's tower. Whether or not this is actually illegal is a question the faculty is carefully not asking.)
In Going Postal, the consortium was exposed, and the Grand Trunk Company is probably going to be returned to the Dearheart family.
See also
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