Editing Optical telegraph (section)

====History in France====
[[File:Reseau chappe77.png|thumb|right|The Chappe Network in France]]
After Chappe's initial line (between Paris and Lille), the Paris to [[Strasbourg]] with 50 stations followed soon after (1798). [[Napoleon Bonaparte]] made full use of the telegraph by obtaining speedy information on enemy movements. In 1801 he had Abraham Chappe build an extra-large station to transmit across the English Channel in preparation for an invasion of Britain. A pair of such stations were built on a test line over a comparable distance. The line to [[Calais]] was extended to [[Boulogne]] in anticipation and a new design station was briefly in operation at Boulogne, but the invasion never happened. In 1812, Napoleon took up another design of Abraham Chappe for a mobile telegraph that could be taken with him on campaign. This was still in use in 1853 during the [[Crimean War]].<ref>Holzmann & Pehrson, pp. 71–73</ref>

The invention of the telegraph was followed by an enthusiasm concerning its potential to support [[direct democracy]]. For instance, based on [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau|Rousseau]]'s argument that direct democracy was improbable in large constituencies, the French Intellectual [[Alexandre-Théophile Vandermonde]] commented:

{{Blockquote|Something has been said about the telegraph which appears perfectly right to me and gives the right measure of its importance. Such invention might be enough to render democracy possible in its largest scale. Many respectable men, among them Jean-Jacques Rousseau, have thought that democracy was impossible within large constituencies.… The invention of the telegraph is a novelty that Rousseau did not expect to happen. It enables long-distance communication at the same pace and clarity than that of conversation in a living room. This solution may address by itself the objections to large [direct] democratic republics. It may even be done in the absence of representative constitutions.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Mattelart|first=Armand|date=1999|title=La communication et la promesse de rédemption|url=https://www.persee.fr/doc/quad_0987-1381_1999_num_40_1_1428|journal=Quaderni|volume=40|issue=1|pages=69–78|doi=10.3406/quad.1999.1428}}</ref>}}

The operational costs of the telegraph in the year 1799/1800 were 434,000 [[franc]]s ($1.2 million in 2015 in silver costs<ref name=Edvinsson>Rodney Edvinsson, [https://www.historicalstatistics.org/Currencyconverter.html Historical Currency Converter, accessed 8 January 2021.]</ref>). In December 1800, Napoleon cut the budget of the telegraph system by 150,000 francs ($400,000 in 2015)<ref name=Edvinsson/> leading to the Paris-Lyons line being temporarily closed. Chappe sought commercial uses of the system to make up the deficit, including use by industry, the financial sector, and newspapers. Only one proposal was immediately approved—the transmission of results from the state-run lottery. No non-government uses were approved. The lottery had been abused for years by fraudsters who knew the results, selling tickets in provincial towns after the announcement in Paris, but before the news had reached those towns.<ref>{{multiref|Shelby T. McCloy, ''French Inventions of the Eighteenth Century'', p. 46, University Press of Kentucky, 2015 {{isbn|0813163978}}.|Rollo Appleyard, ''Pioneers of Electrical Communication'', pp. 271–272, Books for Libraries Press, 1968 (reprint of Macmillan, 1930) {{oclc|682063110}}.}}</ref>

[[File:Tour du telegraphe Chappe Saverne 02.JPG|thumb|left|A Chappe semaphore tower near [[Saverne]], France]]
In 1819 [[Norwich Duff]], a young British Naval officer, visiting [[Clermont-en-Argonne]], walked up to the telegraph station there and engaged the signalman in conversation. Here is his note of the man's information:<ref>{{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20070624023608/http://www.kittybrewster.com/images/Norwich_Duff_Journal_Intro.htm Commander Norwich Duff's European Tour Journal, 1819]}}, www.kittybrewster.com, archived 24 June 2007.</ref>

{{Blockquote|The pay is twenty five ''[[Solidus (coin)#France|sous]]'' per day and he [the signalman] is obliged to be there from day light till dark, at present from half past three till half past eight; there are only two of them and for every minute a signal is left without being answered they pay five ''sous'': this is a part of the branch which communicates with Strasburg and a message arrives there from Paris in six minutes it is here in four.<ref>{{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20050123042146/http://www.kittybrewster.com/images/Norwich_Duff_Journal_pages022.htm Journal of Norwich Duff]}}, 13 July 1819.</ref>|Norwich Duff}}

The network was reserved for government use, but an early case of [[wire fraud]] occurred in 1834 when two bankers, François and Joseph Blanc, bribed the operators at a station near [[Tours]] on the line between Paris and [[Bordeaux]] to pass Paris stock exchange information to an accomplice in Bordeaux. It took three days for the information to travel the 300 mile distance, giving the schemers plenty of time to play the market. An accomplice at Paris would know whether the market was going up or down days before the information arrived in Bordeaux via the newspapers, after which Bordeaux was sure to follow. The message could not be inserted in the telegraph directly because it would have been detected. Instead, pre-arranged deliberate errors were introduced into existing messages which were visible to an observer at Bordeaux. Tours was chosen because it was a division station where messages were purged of errors by an inspector who was privy to the secret code used and unknown to the ordinary operators. The scheme would not work if the errors were inserted prior to Tours. The operators were told whether the market was going up or down by the colour of packages (either white or grey paper wrapping) sent by [[mail coach]], or, according to another anecdote, if the wife of the Tours operator received a package of socks (down) or gloves (up) thus avoiding any evidence of misdeed being put in writing.<ref>{{cite book |last= Berloquin|first= Pierre|date= 2008|title= Hidden Codes & Grand Designs|publisher= Sterling|page= 25|isbn=978-1-4027-7300-6}}</ref> The scheme operated for two years until it was discovered in 1836.<ref>Holzmann & Pehrson, pp. 75–76</ref><ref>{{cite web|last1=Holzmann |first1=Gerard J. |url=https://www.inc.com/magazine/19990915/13554.html |title=Taking stock |publisher=Inc |date=15 September 1999}}</ref>

The French optical system remained in use for many years after other countries had switched to the [[electrical telegraph]]. Partly, this was due to inertia; France had the most extensive optical system and hence the most difficult to replace. But there were also arguments put forward for the superiority of the optical system. One of these was that the optical system is not so vulnerable to saboteurs as an electrical system with many miles of unguarded wire. [[Samuel Morse]] failed to sell the electrical telegraph to the French government. Eventually the advantages of the electrical telegraph of improved privacy, and all-weather and nighttime operation won out.<ref>{{cite web|last=Holzmann|first=Gerard|title=Data Communications: The First 2,500 Years|url=http://spinroot.com/gerard/pdf/hamburg94b.pdf|access-date=28 June 2011}}</ref> A decision was made in 1846 to replace the optical telegraph with the [[Foy–Breguet telegraph|Foy–Breguet electrical telegraph]] after a successful trial on the [[Rouen]] line. This system had a display which mimicked the look of the Chappe telegraph indicators to make it familiar to telegraph operators. [[Jules Guyot]] issued a dire warning of the consequences of what he considered to be a serious mistake. It took almost a decade before the optical telegraph was completely decommissioned. One of the last messages sent over the French semaphore was the report of the [[Siege of Sevastopol (1854–1855)|fall of Sebastopol]] in 1855.<ref>Holzmann & Pehrson, pp. 92–94</ref>