HISTORY OF TELEGRAPHS.

BY J. R. PARKER.

Words.

Languages.

A VERY learned French writer justly observes that "words are the bond of society, the vehicles of knowledge, the basis of the sciences, the depositories of the discoveries of a nation, of its knowledge, its cultivation, its ideas. The knowledge of words, or language, therefore, is an indispensable means of acquiring things."

Of languages there are two general classes, written and unwritten. The savages comprehend only the latter, because they never have been accustomed to the use of letters, but communicate their ideas by sounds, or through the medium of the ears. Among the class of written languages are those in which ideas are communicated by characters or signs addressed to the eye, with a pen, brush or types, flags or telegraph signals. This fact will doubtless call the attention to the great diversity of signs and modes adopted to hold communication.

It may truly be said that of all the ingenious inventions. to hold intercourse, none exceeds in simplicity, and certainly none equals in rapidity, the telegraphic system of language.

The word telegraph is derived from two Greek words, teele, at a distance, and grapho, to write, or indicate by signs; as telescope is derived, in like manner, from the Greek words teele, at a distance, and scopeo, to see.

Rapidity of the telegraph.

Its antiquity.

Another name is also taken from the Greek, semaphore, from seema, a sign, and phero, to bear or carry.

There are no means of conveying intelligence with a rapidity equal to that of the telegraph; for with the exception of the scarcely perceptible delay at each station, necessary to repeat a communication, its rapidity may be compared to that of light itself.

A perfect telegraph system should be sufficiently copious to communicate, by signs, all that could be conveyed by writing. This art was not unknown to the nations of antiquity. Signals of different kinds have been employed from the earliest periods of history. They were sometimes addressed to the eye, and sometimes to the ear. The manner of communicating is variously stated; by fire signals, flags, shutters and arms, fixed upon a post, displaying a variety of positions, denoting the several letters of the alphabet, singly and conjoined. As far as the ancients were acquainted with it, we find mention made of it by Homer, Eschylus, and Julius Africanus. Livy, Vegetius and Plutarch state that the Roman generals used such signals; and they have been used among the Chinese, Scythians and Gauls, and almost all barbarous nations. Polybius invented a mode of indicating the letters of the Greek alphabet by the display of torches; but the communications were made between two stations only.t

We have no positive information that any methodized codes of signals were used in the fleets of the ancients, but such commanders as Themistocles and Conon must have directed their marine operations by so obvious a mode as by signals made by flags or lights. That flags were made use of is evident; for it is written that if the

* See note A.

† See note B.

Introduction of the telegraph system in England.

ship which carried Egeus to Crete returned in safety, a white flag was to be hoisted.

In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, we meet with the first regular sets of signals and sealed orders to the commanders of fleets, which were to be opened and acted upon when a certain latitude was attained. James the Second, when admiral, was the first who introduced a system of methodized signals, by means of which, divisions of fleets, as well as single ships, could be directed to act in any specific manner. Previous to his time, the principles of co-operation, connected procedure, and change of position adapted to circumstances, were very imperfectly, if at all understood. When once an action commenced, every idea of regulating its farther progress was abandoned. The degree of naval science then practised became nearly useless; and daring resolution, and the physical power of grappling with the enemy, decided the fortune of the day.

The Duke of York, (afterwards James the Second,) first adopted a scientific formation of line, and an order of battle calculated for various situations in respect to the enemy, their number, and the state of the wind and weather. The Duke's fighting and sailing instructions, classed according to their various heads, were referred to by a specific signal pointing to each movement or manœuvre of the class. The ground work, resting upon unchangeable general principles, though it may have received many additions, and may have been simplified by the numerical order of signals, remains to this day as the basis of evolutions, and the germ from which has sprung the British naval code.

Le P. Hôte, in his Art des Armées Navales, printed at Lyons in 1727, has given a system of signals with sails, varying flags, and guns fired at slow and quick time, at night. Some of his signals were of a clumsy description,

Invention of the modern telegraph in France.

such as the suspending a water cask from the yard arm, to indicate want of water, and a large hatchet, to show the want of wood or fuel. To express a numeral, he recommends hoisting up and lowering a certain flag, till the number meant was thus counted out.

Many years after, a species of day and night telegraph was known to have been put into operation by the Marquis of Worcester. It was constructed upon the lettering plan, but what were its form, and manner, and principle of operation, does not appear.

Monsieur Amontons, a Frenchman, recommended the holding up of large letters, to be viewed through telescopes. Dr. Hook was also the inventor of a land telegraph, with a dictionary, upon the numerical plan, dedicated to the Royal Society of London. Kircher also hit upon a similar invention; but a Monsieur de la Bourdonnais, a Frenchman, brought this plan to considerable perfection. The telegraphing of words and sentences was known to the ancients. But during the French revolution, which was prolific in everything that tended to develope the resources of the human mind, a report was made to the National Convention, by a Monsieur Chappe, of the modern telegraph. This machine consisted of an upright post, with a bar of wood, or balance beam, eleven or twelve feet long, moving on its centre across the top, like a scale beam, and having at each extremity shorter bars, called indicators, which likewise turned upon their respective centres. All the requisite combinations could be made, by placing the large and the smaller bars either horizontally or vertically, or at different angles with the horizon. The use of it was complicated.

Lord George Murray coustructed a six shutter telegraph, turned with pulleys connected with cranks below,

Shutter Telegraph.

Sema horic Te eg aph.

in such a manner that the whole surface or the edges of the shutters might be exhibited to the eye, according to the required signals. This shutter telegraph gives sixty-three combinations. Its practice and use have been superseded, in England, by the introduction of Sir Home Popham's semaphore telegraph, which consists of an upright post or mast, with two semaphoric arms moving vertically on their respective centres, one at the top, the other half way down; each arm being made to perform an entire revolution, and turning with facility and despatch, so as to take any position that may be req ireddiffering however from each other in principle of motion, degrees of power and mechanical contrivance.

The principle of semaphores, or the projection of an arm from a mast, originated in France. Its powers depend upon the number of arms or wings attached to the mast. An extension of operations is effected by the addition of balls and flags. It includes three distinct principles the first is the projection of an arm or wing from the top or the side of an upright post; the second is the construction or mechanical contrivance, by means of which the numerals are made, and the combinations formed; the third principle comprehends the limits of power furnished by the single and compound action of the wings.

It is very desirable that telegraphic communication should be rendered general or universal. The celerity of intercourse which would then be established would, in the abstract, confer incalculable benefit on mankind, and would be particularly subservient to the interests of commerce, and of all mercantile transactions, while science, philosophy and belles lettres would be materially aided by a speedy communication of discoveries and improvements tending to the advancement of human knowledge.