History Repeats Itself: Sending High Speed E-mail Messages 200 Years Ago

Low-tech Magazine has published an article by Kris De Decker about an almost forgotten predecessor to email: the optical telegraph.

In 1791, Frenchman Claude Chappe developed the optical telegraph. Thanks to this technology, messages could be transferred very quickly over long distances, without the need for postmen, horses, wires or electricity. Within a few years it was possible to send messages throughout Europe at the speed of an airplane — wireless and without need for electricity.

The optical telegraph network consisted of a chain of towers... placed 5 to 20 kilometers apart from each other. Every tower had a telegrapher, looking through a telescope at the previous tower in the chain. If the semaphore on that tower was put into a certain position, the telegrapher copied that symbol on his own tower. A message could be transmitted from Amsterdam to Venice in one hour's time. A few years before, a messenger on a horse would have needed at least a month's time to do the same.

The optical telegraph network was solely used for military and national communications, individuals did not have access to it – although it was used for transmitting winning lottery numbers and stock market data.

A similar network was attempted in North America but never had much success. Kris De Decker's article only describes the more successful networks in Europe.

You can read more at http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2007/12/email-in-the-18.html.

Comments

[Eric]

Yes this was depicted in the movie Count of Monte Cristo, starring Richard Chamberlain. The signals were transmitted by semaphore from one station to the next.

[Kenneth Lary]

A version of this was also depicted in the movie The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. They had signal fires that went from mountain peak to mountain peak.

[Ifor Jackson]

One of the most effective was that between the two ports of Holyhead and Liverpool. The 160km chain of signal stations, the remains of most still exist, is fully chronicled in the book 'Faster than the Wind' by Frank Large (ISBN 0952102099 )

[Moshe Davis]

In ancient Israel a similar system was used during the Second Temple period to notify the Jewish population then living in Babylonia (today's Iran & Iraq) of the declaration of the new month by the Sages in Jerusalem. Signal fires were lifted on tall poles and waved, the signal traveling from mountaintop to mountaintop the entire distance in one evening.

[adele]

To think of all we owe to the talking drums of Africa............