You know, ferrets, the vicious little beasts related to stoats, weasels and wolverines. It really is true that when Cable and Wireless built that first - private sector! - fibre telephone system in The City then did so by strapping cable to a ferret which was then sent through the pipes. We think this is one of those stories that should be regularly repeated so that it doesn’t drop out of the national consciousness.

It also aids in explaining this:

Northern Rail is still relying on fax machines to communicate with staff as the state-owned operator grapples with some of the worst delays and cancellations in the industry.

And this:

Faxes are still being used to run the UK’s electricity grids, the Government’s energy systems operator has admitted.

And it’s the basis of the disagreement between Bill Nordhaus and Nick Stern over how to deal with climate change.

Back when there was the London Hydraulic Power Company. Pressurised tubes snaking across London to deliver power to people. It was, if we’re honest about it, a technology out of date very soon after it was first adopted - electricity and wires were “better” by perhaps 1904 which is a bit of a blow to a company started in 1893. However, the system still ran factories up into the 1960s and really closed only in 1977. The ferrets bit is that it had the right to dig the roads to maintain those pipes - and it had that network of pipes down which it was possible to stick ferrets - which was very useful when laying a telephone network. Thus the shell - empty pipes and the right to dig the roads - was bought up by the nascent phone company and ferrets stuck down pipes trailing a cable attached to a little leg.. All very fun.

But, note, that power system still lasted 70 years after it was, if we were building anew or even linking up a new customer, technologically redundant and past it.

Which is the point that Nordhaus makes. Sure, deal with climate change. But don’t junk what currently works. Only, when that needs to be replaced, replace it with the new and more climate friendly. For, that way, the cost of dealing with the problem is minimised. The cost of the new and climate friendly is no longer the total cost of the new system. Rather, it’s the cost of the climate friendly minus the cost of building another of the old as a replacement for what doesn’t work any more anyway.

Or, in more formal terms, work with the capital cycle. Run that old power plant for the 70 years it’s worth running it for. Only then replace it with that new fangled electricity.

If faxes still work then why not faxes? Until the faxes themselves need to be replaced that is?

Tim Worstall