Episode 1 of 3
Devising a Rapid Communication System
- When
- 1790
- Where
- France
At the height of the Revolution, the Chappe brothers began designing a system for swift government intelligence and orders.
During 1790–1795 France needed a swift, reliable military communications system to thwart its enemies' war efforts. In mid-1790 the Chappe brothers set about devising a system that would allow the central government to receive intelligence and transmit orders in the shortest possible time. Chappe settled on an optical system.
Sources
- Optical telegraph Wikipedia, revision of 2026-06-11
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.