12 
THE TELEGRAPH. 
throat on the 25th January, 1805. Besides the monument 
which was erected to him in the cemetery of Pere Lachaise, 
there is under the lofty signal-tower in the Rue de Grenelle- 
Saint-Germain, from which so many historical despatches have 
issued, a small memorial to mark the spot where Claude 
Chappe committed suicide. 
Claude’s brothers, Ignatius and Rene, were appointed di¬ 
rectors, with salaries of 8,000 francs per annum. They had to 
resign in 1830, when a royal order appointed M. Marchal pro- 
visionary administrator, and from that time to 1848, the aerial 
telegraph remained stationary. M. Ferdinand Flocon was at 
that date appointed administrator of telegraphs, but was suc¬ 
ceeded in 1849 by M. Alphonse Foy, who had previously held the 
office under Louis Philippe. It was M. Foy who had the honour 
of introducing the electric telegraph into France. He entrusted 
M. BiAguet with the task of constructing a French apparatus 
for reproducing the signals of the aerial telegraph. This 
difficult problem was solved by M. Br^guet in the most elegant 
manner; but the signal apparatus soon became merely alpha¬ 
betical, that is to say, the signals of the aerial telegraph were 
speedily reduced to the twenty-five letters of the alphabet, 
supplemented by the figures and other signals that are met 
with in all the other systems. 
The aerial telegraph was also used by our troops during the 
Crimean war, and M. Inspector Carette utilized it on this 
occasion as a field telegraph. Submarine telegraphy, then 
scarcely two years old, was also brought into the Crimea by 
the English, who connected Varna and Balaclava by laying in 
the Black sea a gutta-percha covered wire, which lasted about 
six months. The new and the old telegraphy were by these 
circumstances brought face to face. Aerial telegraphy, how¬ 
ever, had had its day, and since then it has entirely disappeared. 
Other European nations have had visual or aerial telegraphs, 
which, although inferior to Chappe’s system, have nevertheless 
proved of great service for distant communications. It is 
unnecessary here to describe these inventions, which are 
similar to the aerial telegraph. 
The visual telegraph has not been abandoned even at the 
present time. Systems of optical communication have recently 
been adopted, especially in the last wars, and the experiments 
