The mechanical world wide web technology
- travelkev
- Feb 5
- 4 min read
Updated: Mar 12
Long before the advent of the internet there was the electrical telegraph, connecting countries and allowing human thought to speed around the globe at a blazing 15 words per minute for a highly experienced Morse operator. Predating electronic technology by a half century however, was a lesser-known system. The first practical telecommunication networks were not electrical but optical and used a system of visual semaphore in the 18th century. Their development would lay the foundation of network protocols still in use today.
We live in an almost completely interconnected world, where emails, video calls, web pages connect us at near light speed anywhere on the globe where there is an internet connection, mobile phone tower or satellite reception.
Our telecommunication systems are vast and complex and rely on communication protocols that have evolved over time from earlier technologies. In the 19th century, the electrical telegraph revolutionised how we exchanged information and brought a new science of signal processing into being.
Predating the telegraph by half a century however was a novel but effective system of optical semaphore, developed in France by the inventor Claude Chappe who demonstrated its practical effectiveness in 1792. The French Army immediately saw the benefits of the system and by the close of the 18th century, the télégraphe Chappe was being extensively used and extended to connect Paris with all corners of L’Hexagone (mainland France) through a network of relay towers.
Chappe’s system relied on a mast on the top of these towers that comprised two movable arms on pivots. The arms could be placed at a variety of angles and a watcher equipped with a telescope in another tower along the relay line, could read and note the positions and then re-transmit the message. The towers were built between 12 and 25km apart with two telescopes, one pointing “up” and one pointing “down” the line and manned during daylight hours by signalmen.
