Louis Remme’s horse race against a steamship for a fortune

".. and that kids, is why the old microwave towers which turn out to have a 100ms advantage in RTT over your fibre optic link are still being used by canny traders to get in ahead of the other guy, on their market knowledge"

Reminds me of the Sniper in Mahwaw (https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/) posts about HFT and microwave towers.

I think this is the first in the series: https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2014/09/22/hft-in-my-ba...

This lead me down a wormhole. Thanks for the interesting links!

Somewhere, a hedge fund is quietly investing in neutrino comms research.

Neutrinos, phooey. Tachyons are the future, I tell you!

>Remme had just deposited $12,500 in gold slugs to his account, the profits of selling cattle to the beefsteak-hungry miners slaving in the camps along the Mother Lode. How many of those Forty-Niners had gleaned that much gold for two months' labor?

Inflation adjusted that's more than $150k per month. And people thing we have a good time now ...

This story is written creatively, yet succinctly. Fantastic.