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waiting lines or queues
in which models are
constructed so that waiting times can be predicted.
Agner Erlang was a Danish child prodigy sent to
University to study maths at just 16. In 1908 he went
to work for the Copenhagen Telephone Company.
The instant popularity of the phone following its
invention had very quickly led to long queues for
lines. Erlang applied the theory of probabilities to
the problems of telephone traffic. In particular he set
out to measure what fraction of callers attempting to
call someone outside a village must wait because all
of the lines are in use by measuring stray currents.
His work involved a lot of traipsing the streets with
a workman and a ladder to shinny down manholes.
It turns out that phone calls distributed at random
follow Poisson’s Law of Distribution. Erlang is
known as The Father of Queuing Theory and the
mathematics underlying today's huge and complex
telephone networks around the world is still based
on his work. In 1946 the international unit of
telephone traffic was named the Erlang in his
honour. There’s also a computer programming
language called Erlang and theories developed from
his work are still used to calculate the likely number
of customers arriving at a counter or call centre.
The ‘party line’ of the 21st century is the unlocked
wifi signal for broadband access. When you first log
on to access your wifi signal the list of local users
comes up. Some folk are using the naming facility
to send anonymous messages to their neighbours,
as in;
Number 42 stop your bloody dog barking!
Young People Are More Patient Than Their Elders
Not long ago I called on the young couple renting the
flat below mine. She was a delightful smiling Kiwi
intoxicated with the thrill that comes from no longer
being 1000 miles from anywhere. He was a rather
spiky South African working in finance on Canary
Wharf. On his way home this particular day he’d had
to queue somewhere and I arrived as he was venting
his spleen about the inadequacies of the Mother
Country. In concluding his presentation on the
socio-economic decline of Great Britain he told me
that this country is finished. Finished he said again for
emphasis. Right oh I said and not really having time to
respond because Mastermind was on a minute I stuck
to my original mission. “Well in the meantime if you
could just see your way to moving the wheelie bins
three feet back into place when the bin men have been
on Friday rather than squeezing past them on your way
to work that would be marvellous”.
On the whole however studies reveal the young to be
quite good at queuing, showing more patience and
endurance than older folk. It’s probably got a lot to do
with the mobile telephone which has migrated from the
ear as a device for listening to the palm of the hand as
a device for looking at. Maybe the young are content
to wait longer because they now come equipped with
the wherewithal to occupy themselves. Look about you
next time you are in the queue at the Post Office and
count how many people under the age of say forty or
so are transfixed by a little oblong of metal sitting
in their palm as if it were their instruction manual for
the very art of life itself
–
breathe in, breath out...