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-Semaphore-
Semaphore was devised by the Chappe brothers in France after they lost their livelihoods because of the French Revolution. The first Chappe semaphore line was established between Paris and Lille in 1792 and used mechanical arms. It was used to carry dispatches for a war between France and Austria. The first symbol of a message to Lille would pass 120 miles through 15 stations in only nine minutes. The speed of the line varied with the weather but the line to Lille typically transferred 36 codes in about 32 minutes. The system was widely copied by other European states. It was used by Napoleon to coordinate his empire and army. In the early 1800s when the maritime world adopted semaphore they used hand-held flags however rods - disks - paddles - gloved hands or even bare hands could have been used instead. Many European governments instituted a semaphore service as part of their postal union. Semaphore lines had several crucial advantages over post-roads - firstly a semaphore message could easily travel at several thousand miles-per-hour. Secondly with large signals and a telescope the distance between stations could be as much as 30 km. It could be used over mountain ranges and bad terrain. This reduced the investment and the number of stations over other forms of communication. The crucial disadvantages were that they were affected by the weather especially fog and rain - non-coded messages could be read by anyone with the training. The semaphores were successful enough that Samuel Morse failed to sell the electric telegraph to the French government. France finally committed to replace semaphores with electric telegraphs in 1846. The last stationary semaphore link in regular service was in Sweden connecting an island with a mainland telegraph line. It went out of service in 1880.
