support for it in Paris with the help of another of his
brothers, Ignace, who had been elected to the ruling Legislative Assembly. But the turmoil of revolutionary France was a difficult
environment in which to start promoting a new invention, and Ignace didn't get very far. When the Chappe brothers staged another
test in the town of Belleville, near Paris, in 1792, their apparatus was destroyed by a mob who suspected that they were trying
to communicate with royalist prisoners being held in Temple Prison. The Chappes were lucky to escape with their lives.
By this time Claude Chappe had found a way to do without the synchronized clocks: He devised a completely new design that
consisted of two small rotating arms on the end of a longer rotating bar. This bar, called the regulator, could be aligned
horizontally or vertically, and each of the small arms, called indicators, could be rotated into one of seven positions in
forty-five-degree increments. The design allowed for a total of 98 different combinations, 6 of which were reserved for "special
use," leaving 92 codes to represent numbers, letters, and common syllables. A special codebook with 92 numbered pages, each
of which listed 92 numbered meanings, meant that an additional 92 times 92, or 8,464, words and phrases could be represented
by transmitting two codes in succession. The first indicated the page number in the codebook, and the second indicated the
intended word or phrase on that page.
Abraham-Louis Breguet, the noted clock maker, built Chappe a clever control mechanism for his new design: Through a system
of pulleys, a scaled-down model of the rotating arms could be used to control the positions of a much bigger set of arms.
The big arms could then be mounted on the roof of a tower and controlled from the inside by an operator. Chappe believed it
would be possible to send messages quickly over great distances by constructing several such towers a few miles apart in a
long line, each within sight of the next.
In 1793, Chappe sent details of this new design to the National Convention, the ruling body that had replaced the Legislative
Assembly. His proposal was picked up by Charles-Gilbert Romme, president of the Committee of Public Instruction, who grasped
its potential and suggested that the convention fund an experiment to evaluate its military applications.
Chappe-style optical telegraph, showing arm positions corresponding to different letters Mounted on the roof of a tower, the
arms were controlled from the inside by an operator
A committee was duly appointed, consisting of Joseph Lakanal, a respected scientist; Louis Arbogast, a professor of mathematics;
and Pierre Claude Francois Daunou, a legislator and historian. Money was allocated for the construction of a line of three
telegraph stations in Belleville, Ecouen, and Saint-Martin-du-Tertre, spanning a distance of about twenty miles. If a message
could be passed along a network of three towers successfully, the system would obviously work with a larger number of towers
over greater distances. Following the Chappe brothers' run-in with the Paris mob, the mayors of each of the three towns were
made responsible for the safety of the telegraphs and their operators.
Within a few weeks the towers had been constructed, and the committee was invited to a demonstration on July 12, 1793. Transmission
of the first message began at 4:26 P.M., with two operators at each station, one operating the little whirling arms, the other
watching the next station through a telescope. The position of the arms at the sending station was reported by the observer
in the middle station, where the operator would then move the arms to form the same signal; each signal was held in place
for a few seconds, and the message rippled down the line to the receiving station. The three telegraph towers took eleven
minutes to send a rather boring message ("DAUNOU HAS ARRIVED HERE. HE
brothers, Ignace, who had been elected to the ruling Legislative Assembly. But the turmoil of revolutionary France was a difficult
environment in which to start promoting a new invention, and Ignace didn't get very far. When the Chappe brothers staged another
test in the town of Belleville, near Paris, in 1792, their apparatus was destroyed by a mob who suspected that they were trying
to communicate with royalist prisoners being held in Temple Prison. The Chappes were lucky to escape with their lives.
By this time Claude Chappe had found a way to do without the synchronized clocks: He devised a completely new design that
consisted of two small rotating arms on the end of a longer rotating bar. This bar, called the regulator, could be aligned
horizontally or vertically, and each of the small arms, called indicators, could be rotated into one of seven positions in
forty-five-degree increments. The design allowed for a total of 98 different combinations, 6 of which were reserved for "special
use," leaving 92 codes to represent numbers, letters, and common syllables. A special codebook with 92 numbered pages, each
of which listed 92 numbered meanings, meant that an additional 92 times 92, or 8,464, words and phrases could be represented
by transmitting two codes in succession. The first indicated the page number in the codebook, and the second indicated the
intended word or phrase on that page.
Abraham-Louis Breguet, the noted clock maker, built Chappe a clever control mechanism for his new design: Through a system
of pulleys, a scaled-down model of the rotating arms could be used to control the positions of a much bigger set of arms.
The big arms could then be mounted on the roof of a tower and controlled from the inside by an operator. Chappe believed it
would be possible to send messages quickly over great distances by constructing several such towers a few miles apart in a
long line, each within sight of the next.
In 1793, Chappe sent details of this new design to the National Convention, the ruling body that had replaced the Legislative
Assembly. His proposal was picked up by Charles-Gilbert Romme, president of the Committee of Public Instruction, who grasped
its potential and suggested that the convention fund an experiment to evaluate its military applications.
Chappe-style optical telegraph, showing arm positions corresponding to different letters Mounted on the roof of a tower, the
arms were controlled from the inside by an operator
A committee was duly appointed, consisting of Joseph Lakanal, a respected scientist; Louis Arbogast, a professor of mathematics;
and Pierre Claude Francois Daunou, a legislator and historian. Money was allocated for the construction of a line of three
telegraph stations in Belleville, Ecouen, and Saint-Martin-du-Tertre, spanning a distance of about twenty miles. If a message
could be passed along a network of three towers successfully, the system would obviously work with a larger number of towers
over greater distances. Following the Chappe brothers' run-in with the Paris mob, the mayors of each of the three towns were
made responsible for the safety of the telegraphs and their operators.
Within a few weeks the towers had been constructed, and the committee was invited to a demonstration on July 12, 1793. Transmission
of the first message began at 4:26 P.M., with two operators at each station, one operating the little whirling arms, the other
watching the next station through a telescope. The position of the arms at the sending station was reported by the observer
in the middle station, where the operator would then move the arms to form the same signal; each signal was held in place
for a few seconds, and the message rippled down the line to the receiving station. The three telegraph towers took eleven
minutes to send a rather boring message ("DAUNOU HAS ARRIVED HERE. HE
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