TELEGRAPH. 
givfes the information that Troy was taken. 
I have been looking out these ten years 
(says he)' to see when that would happen, 
and this night it is done.” Of the antiquity 
of a mode of conveying intelligence quickly 
to a great distance, this is certainly a proof) 
The Chinese, when they send couriers on 
the great canal, or when any great man 
travels there, make signals, by fire, from 
pne day’s journey to another, to have every 
thing prepared; and most of the barbarous 
nations used formerly to give the alarm of 
war by fires lighted on the hills or rising 
grounds. 
It does not appear that the moderns had 
thought of such a machiue as a telegraph 
till the year 16C3, when the Marquis of 
Worcester, in his “ Century of Inventions,” 
affirmed that he had discovered “ a method 
by which, at a window, as far as eye can 
discover black from white, a man may 
hold discourse with his correspondent, with- 
out noise made or notice taken; being ac- 
r^rding to occasion given, or means afford- 
ed, ex re nata, and no need of provision 
before hand ; though much better if fore- 
seen, and course taken by mutual consent 
of parties.” This could be done only by 
inteans of a telegraph, which in the next 
sentence is declared to have been rendered 
so perfect, that by means of it the corres- 
pondence could be carried on “ by night as 
well as by day, though as dark as pitch is 
black.” 
About forty years afterwards M, Amon- 
tons proposed a new telegraph. His me- 
thod was this : Let there be people placed 
in several stations, at such a distance from 
one another, that by the help of a telescope 
a man in one station may see a signal made 
in the next before him ; he must imme- 
diately make the same signal, that it may be 
seen by persons in the station next after him, 
who are to communicate it to those in the 
following station, and so on. These signals 
may be as letters of the alphabet, or as a 
cypher, understood only by the two persons 
who are in the distant places, and not by 
those who make the signals. The person 
in the second station making the signal to 
the person in the third the vety moment he 
sees it m the first ; the news may be car- 
ried to the greatest distance in as little 
time as is necessary to make the signals in 
thd first station. The distance of the seve- 
ral stations, which must be as few as possi- 
ble, is measured by the reach of a tele- 
scope. Amontons tried this method in a 
small tract of land, before several persons 
VOL. VI. 
of the highest rank, at ffie court; of France. 
It was not, however, till the French revo- 
lution that the telegraph was applied to use- 
ful purposes. 
Whether M. Chappe, who is' said to have 
invented the telegraph first used by the 
French about the end of 1793, knew any 
thing of Amonton’s invention or not, it is 
impossible to say ; but his telegraph was 
constructed on principles nearly similar. 
The manner of using this telegi-aph was as 
follows : At tlie. first station, which was on 
the roof of the palace of the Louvre at 
Paris, M. Chappe,. the inventor, received 
in wiling from the Committee of Public 
Welfare, the words to be sent to Lisle, near 
which the French army at that time was. 
An upright post was erected on tlie Louvre, 
at the top of which were two transverse 
arms, moveable in all directions by a single 
piece of mechanism, and with inconceivable 
rapidity. He invented a number of posi- 
tions for these arms, which stood as signs 
for the letters of the alphabet ; and these, 
for the greater celerity and simplicity, he 
reduced in mimher as much as possible. 
The grammarian will easily conceive that 
sixteen signs may amply supply all the let- 
ters of the alphabet, since sonie.letters may 
be omitted not only without^ detriment but 
w'ith advantage. These signs, as they were 
arbitrary, could be changed every week ; so 
that the sign of B for one day, might be, the 
sign of M the next ; and it was only necessary 
that the persons at the extremities should 
know the key. The intermediate operators 
were only instructed generally in' these six- 
teen signals ; wliich were so distinct, so 
marked, so different the one from tire other, 
that they were easily remembered. 
The construction of the machine was 
such, that each signal was uniformly given 
in precisely the same manner at all times : 
It did not depend on the operator’s manual 
skill; and the position of the arm could 
never, for any one signal, be a degree higher 
or a degree lower, its movement being re- 
gulated mechanically. M. Chappe having 
received at the Louvre the sentence to be 
conveyed, gave a known signal to the second 
station, which was Mont Martre, to pre- 
pare. At each station there was a watch 
tower, where telescopes were fixed, and 
the person on watch gave the signal of pre- 
paration which he had received, and this 
communicated successively through all the 
line, which brought them all into a slate of 
readiness. Tr.e person at Mont Martre 
then received, letter by letter, the sentence 
B b 
