Somewhere between50° 54.20062' N, 1° 26.87229 W and50° 54.20675' N, 1° 26.95470 WCable Ship Monarch, Southampton, England

Other than the tank that contains the cable, which is literally nothing more than a big round hole in the middle of the ship, a cable ship is different from other ships in two ways. One, it comes with a complement of bow and stern thrusters coupled to exquisitely sensitive navigation gear on the bridge, which give it unsurpassed precision-maneuvering and station-keeping powers. In the case of Monarch, a smaller cable repair ship that we visited in Southampton, England, there are at least two differential GPS receivers, one for the bow and one for the stern - hence the two readings given at the head of this section. Each one of them reads out to five decimal places, which implies a resolution of about 1 centimeter.

A long time ago Neal Stephenson wrote this article for wired magazine. I've known about it for a long time (I think it's mentioned somewhere on his personal website), but never managed to encounter and read it.

Now I have. You should too, it's fascinating.

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