HITCHENS: The relics of my past which stirred so many vivid memories

The history of communications technology is the focus of Peter Hitchens’ reflection on forgotten “relics,” describing how old equipment he kept in a loft once enabled international contact. While clearing out storage, Hitchens revisits devices that were once cutting-edge and he says they allowed him, during years when he worked in the old Soviet Union, to connect a British telephone to Soviet telecom systems. He recalls listening to messages left on a machine in Moscow by triggering a special signal, including doing so from Kazakhstan, and describes experimenting with “packet switching” so a small laptop could link via landline copper to his newspaper’s main computer in London. He also references earlier, cruder efforts using a Tandy device. Hitchens frames the discarded gear as “technojunk” now, contrasting the ambition of past networking with the practical reality that he later could no longer send a major story because he lacked a working telephone connection.