Chappe

The Catholic Church is represented by worldly clerics such as the Abbé Chappe, whose unblinkered travels to Siberia, in the 1760s, armed him to denounce Voltaire as the dupe of Catherine the Great.

Why They All Came to Versailles Frederic Raphael 2011

Chappe created a language of 9,999 words, each represented by a different position of the swinging arms.

Boing Boing 2009

Developed by the Frenchman Claude Chappe at the end of the 18th century, optical telegraph lines once stretched from Paris out to Dunkirk and Strasbourg, and were in service for more than half a century:

Boing Boing 2009

Fifty years earlier (in 1791) the Frenchman Claude Chappe developed the optical telegraph.

Telegraphy without Electricity « Isegoria 2008

Claude Chappe had tried it out with his brothers and believed - no, knew it could work.

Archive 2007-11-01 Heather McDougal 2007

At a symposium in Sweden on the optical telegraph in 2004, a history of the Chappe network was presented in beautiful, researched detail.

Semaphore as Information Network Heather McDougal 2007

Claude Chappe had tried it out with his brothers and believed - no, knew it could work.

Semaphore as Information Network Heather McDougal 2007

Claude Chappe himself remained in his position as the head of the system for over 30 years, until there was an administration change.

Semaphore as Information Network Heather McDougal 2007

Chappe experimented and eventually adopted a design using weighted arms, which swiveled to create a large array of shapes, in effect a semaphore.

Semaphore as Information Network Heather McDougal 2007

Claude Chappe, who came from a well-to-do family and who had been an abbe with a secure income, had always been interested in physics, particularly optics.

Semaphore as Information Network Heather McDougal 2007