Pairs not taken

So we all know about twisted-pair ethernet, huh? I get a little frustrated with a lot of histories of the topic, like the recent neil breen^w^wserial port video, because they often fail to address some obvious questions about the origin of twisted-pair network cabling. Well, I will fail to answer these as well, because the reality is that these answers have proven very difficult to track down.
↫ J. B. Crawford

The problems with nailing down an accurate history of the development of the various standards, ideas, concepts, and implementations of Ethernet and other, by now dead, network standards are their age, as well as the fact that their history is entangled with the even longer history of telephone wiring. The reasoning behind some of the choices made by engineers over the past more than 100 years of telephone technology aren’t always clear, and very difficult to retrace.

Crawford dives into some seriously old and fun history here, trying to piece together the origins of twisted pair the best he can. It’s a great read, as all of his writings are.