A CENTURY OF THE TELEGRAPH IN FRANCE. 793 



tain signals of tlie preceding post, transmitted them to the follow- 

 ing, and always thus in succession, and these different signals 

 were so many letters of an alphabet of which they had not the 

 cipher then at Paris and at Rome. The greatest distance seeable 

 by the telescopes made the distance between the posts, of which 

 the number was to be the least that was possible, and, as the sec- 

 ond post made some signals to the third, as soon as they were seen 

 made at the first, the news was found carried to Rome in almost 

 as little time as it needed for making the signals at Paris. 



The government of Louis XV did not occupy themselves with 

 what it considered a mere plaything, and the inventor, discour- 

 aged, renounced his project. Thus was relinquished, some two 

 hundred years ago, a project in telegraphy which was about as 

 rapid, if not rapider, than the slow-coach message from Rome to 

 Paris of the present day, which 

 actually takes half a dozen hours 

 or so for the delivery from domi- 

 cile to domicile. 



In 178S Dupuis experimented 

 in turn with an alphabetic tele- 

 graph, and Linguet, on his side, 

 was also thus occupied about the 

 same epoch. 



The idea was, therefore, so to 

 say, in the air when appeared 

 Claude Chappe, to whom the en- 

 tire globe is indebted in reality 

 for the invention of the telegraph. 

 This is one of the events the most 

 memorable in the history of hu- 

 manity, 



Claude Chappe was born at 

 Brulon (department Sarthe) in 

 1763. His father gave him a class- 

 ical instruction of the most approved kind. The studies of 

 Claude, commenced at the college of Joyeuse, at Rouen, were ter- 

 minated at the seminary of La Fleche ; as to his four brothers, 

 they were placed in an establishment a trifle away from this lat- 

 ter town, and this has caused the supposition to some of his 

 biographers that Claude Chappe had conceived the idea of his 

 telegraph in order to be able to communicate with his brothers. 

 It is to-day demonstrated that this is nothing but a legend. 



Chappe studied the sciences from his early youth. Physical 

 science specially attracted him, and he published at the age of 

 twenty years some very remarkable researches. 



We have said that he submitted to the Legislative Assembly, 





^v 



Chappe. 



