Late 18th-century French inventor
"Tachygraph" redirects here. For the device used for recording vehicle data, see
Tachograph
.
Claude Chappe
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Claude Chappe
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Born
| 25 December 1763
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Died
| 23 January 1805
(
1805-01-24
)
(aged 41)
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Nationality
| French
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Occupation
| Engineer
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Engineering career
|
Projects
| semaphore system
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Significant advance
| telecommunications
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Claude Chappe
(
French:
[klod
?ap]
; 25 December 1763 ? 23 January 1805) was a French inventor who in 1792 demonstrated a practical
semaphore system
that eventually spanned all of
France
. His system consisted of a series of towers, each within line of sight of others, each supporting a wooden mast with two crossarms on pivots that could be placed in various positions. The operator in a tower moved the arms to a sequence of positions, spelling out text messages in semaphore code. The operator in the next tower read the message through a
telescope
, then passed it on to the next tower. This was the first practical
telecommunications
system of the
industrial age
, and was used until the 1850s when
electric telegraph
systems replaced it.
Early life
[
edit
]
Claude Chappe was born in Brulon,
Sarthe
, France, the son of Ignace Chappe, a
controleur
(
intendant
) of the
Crown lands
for
Laval
, and his wife Marie Devernay, daughter of a
physician
of Laval. He was raised for church service, but lost his
sinecure
during the
French Revolution
. He was educated at the
Lycee Pierre Corneille
in
Rouen
.
[1]
His uncle was the
astronomer
Jean-Baptiste Chappe d'Auteroche
, famed for his observations of the
Transit of Venus
in 1761 and again in 1769. The first book Claude read in his youth was his uncle's journal of the 1761 trip, "Voyage en Siberie". His brother, Abraham, wrote "Reading this book greatly inspired him, and gave him a taste for the physical sciences. From this point on, all his studies, and even his pastimes, were focused on that subject." Because of his astronomer uncle, Claude may also have become familiar with the properties of telescopes.
[2]
He and his four unemployed brothers decided to develop a practical system of semaphore relay stations, a task proposed in antiquity, yet never realized.
Claude's brother, Ignace Chappe (1760?1829) was a member of the Legislative Assembly during the
French Revolution
. With his help, the Assembly supported a proposal to build a relay line from Paris to Lille (fifteen stations, about 120 miles), to carry dispatches from the war.
The Chappe brothers determined by experiment that the angles of a rod were easier to see than the presence or absence of panels. Their final design had two arms connected by a cross-arm. Each arm had seven positions, and the cross-arm had four more, permitting a 196-combination code. The arms were from three to thirty feet long, black, and counterweighted, moved by only two handles. Lamps mounted on the arms proved unsatisfactory for night use. The relay towers were placed from 12 to 25 km (10 to 20 miles) apart. Each tower had a telescope pointing both up and down the relay line.
Chappe initially called his invention a
tachygraph
("fast writer").
[3]
However, the
Army
preferred to use the word
telegraph
("far writer"), which was coined by French statesman
Andre Francois Miot de Melito
.
[4]
Today, in order to distinguish it from subsequent telegraph systems, the
French
name for Chappe's semaphore telegraph system is named after him, and thus is known as a
Telegraph Chappe
.
[5]
Alternatively, Chappe coined the phrase
semaphore
,
[6]
from the
Greek
elements σ?μα (sema, "sign"); and from φορ?? (phoros, "carrying"),
[7]
or φορ? (phora, "a carrying") from φ?ρειν (pherein, "to bear").
[8]
In 1794, the first messages were successfully sent between
Paris
and
Lille
.
[5]
In 1794 the semaphore line informed Parisians of the capture of
Conde-sur-l'Escaut
from the Austrians less than an hour after it occurred. Other lines were built, including a line from Paris to Toulon. The system was widely copied by other European states, and was used by
Napoleon
to coordinate his empire and army.
[5]
In 1805, Claude Chappe
killed himself
.
[9]
He was said to be depressed by illness, and claims by rivals that he had plagiarized from military semaphore systems.
In 1824 Ignace Chappe attempted to increase interest in using the semaphore line for commercial messages, such as commodity prices; however, the business community resisted.
From 1844, the government of France funded trials of a new system of
electric telegraph
lines and committed to fully replacing the Chappe telegraph in 1846. Many contemporaries warned of the ease of
sabotage
and interruption of service by cutting a wire. The extent of the French optical telegraph meant that it took some time for the replacement to be completed. The two systems existed side-by-side for about a decade. One of the last messages sent over the Chappe telegraph was news of the
fall of Sevastopol
in 1855.
[10]
Popular culture
[
edit
]
The Chappe semaphore figures prominently in
Alexandre Dumas
'
The Count of Monte Cristo
. The Count bribes an underpaid operator to transmit a false message.
Memorials
[
edit
]
Rue Chappe in the
18th arrondissement of Paris
, is named after Chappe.
[11]
A bronze sculpture of him was erected at the crossing of
Rue du Bac
and
Boulevard Raspail
in Paris. As many statues displeased or offended Hitler, it was removed and melted down during the
Nazi occupation of Paris
, in 1941 or 1942.
[12]
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
"Lycee Pierre Corneille de Rouen - The Lycee Corneille of Rouen"
.
lgcorneille-lyc.spip.ac-rouen.fr
. Retrieved
1 May
2018
.
- ^
"The Early History of Data Networks"
.
people.seas.harvard.edu
. Archived from
the original
on 1 April 2017
. Retrieved
1 May
2018
.
- ^
Beyer, p. 60
- ^
Le Robert historique de la langue francaise, 1992, 1998
- ^
a
b
c
French source:
Tour du telegraphe Chappe
Archived
28 September 2011 at the
Wayback Machine
- ^
Groundbreaking Scientific Experiments, Inventions & Discoveries of the 18th Century
, Jonathan Shectman, p. 172
- ^
Oxford English Dictionary
.
- ^
Webster's Unabridged Dictionary
.
- ^
"Claude Chappe (French engineer)"
.
Encyclopædia Britannica
.
Archived
from the original on 25 June 2009
. Retrieved
7 August
2009
.
- ^
Holzmann, Gerard J.; Pehrson, Bjorn,
The Early History of Data Networks
, pp. 92?94, John Wiley & Sons, 1995
ISBN
0818667826
.
- ^
Booking.com,
Sacre Coup de Cœur - Studio
, accessed 22 January 2023
- ^
"Where the Statues of Paris were sent to Die"
.
messynessychic.com
. 7 January 2016.
Archived
from the original on 19 March 2018
. Retrieved
1 May
2018
.
Bibliography
[
edit
]
- Beyer, Rick, (2003)
The Greatest Stories Never Told
, Harper Collins,
ISBN
0-06-001401-6
- Gerard J. Holzmann
and Bjorn Pehrson,
The Early History of Data Networks
, John Wiley & Sons,
ISBN
0818667826
- Standage, Tom, (1998)
The Victorian Internet
, Bloomsbury Publishing,
ISBN
978-1-62040-592-5
External links
[
edit
]
- French article:
Les Telegraphes Chappe
, l'Ecole Centrale de Lyon
- French article: Le telegraphe aerien, in
Les merveilles de la science
, de Louis Figuier, t. 2, pages 20?68
- Italian article: Francesco Frasca,
Il telegrafo ottico dalla Rivoluzione francese alla guerra di Crimea
, in
Informazioni della Difesa
, n°1, 2000, Roma: Stato Maggiore della Difesa, pp. 44?51
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