Jesuit Telegraph

[Dave Monroe]

Okay, seeing as we're finally at the appropriate point
for this, digging (and not altogether inappropriately
here, either) into the Pynchon List mailbag ...

   "'Speaking as Postmaster-General,' Dr. Franklin
will later amplify, back in Philadelphia, '-- I see
our greatest problem as Time,-- never anything, but
Time.  For any message to reach its recipient, we must
reckon in a fix'd delay,-- months by ship, days over
Land,-- whilst via the Jesuit Telegraph, they enjoy
their d---'d Marvel of instant communication,'--
far-reaching and free of error, thanks to giant
balloons sent to great Altitudes, Mirrors of para-(not
to mention dia-)bolickal perfection, beams of light
focused to hitherto unimagined intensities ..." (M&D,
Ch. 28, p. 287)

Does indeed sound, as I recall Brett speculating, like
Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of
Radiation ...

http://www.bell-labs.com/history/laser/laser_def.html

http://www.bell-labs.com/history/laser/

Transmitted via a communications satellite network
((c) Arthur C. Clarke) ...

http://www.lsi.usp.br/~rbianchi/clarke/ACC.ETRelays.html

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/satcomhistory.html

http://www.telegeography.com/products/maps/cable/index.html

But, from Daniel R. Headrick, When Information Came of
Age: Technologies of Knowledge in the Age of Reason
and Revolution, 1700-1850 (New York: Oxford UP, 2000),
Ch. 6, "Communicating Information: Postal and
Telegraphic Systems," pp. 181-216 ...

"Paul Revere, the American Revolutionary, remembered
his midnight ride of April 18, 1775, in these words:
'I agreed with a Colonel Conant and some other
gentlemen, that if the British went out by water, we
should shew two lanthornes in the North Church
steeple, and if by land, one, as a signal, for we were
apprehensive it would be difficult to cross the
Charles River, or git over Boston neck.'  Eighteen
years later, on July 12, 1793, Claude Chappe presented
his semaphore telegraph to the Committee of Public
Instruction of the French National Convention....
   "Between these two dates there occured a revolution
in communication.  Revere used a simple, prearranged,
onetime signal containing only three potential
messages: 'by land,' 'by sea,' or 'no news.'  Chappe
could communicate any message, in either direction,
faster than a galloping horse.  This was only one of
several great changes in communication that occured in
the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
under the pressure of revolution and war." (pp. 181-2)

   "Many scholars maintian that modern
telecommunications began with the electric
telegraph....
   "Technologically, the advent of electricity was
certainly revolutionary.  From an information point of
view, however, the revolution began half a century
earlier, when Claude Chappe (1763-1805) devised a way
to send any message whatsoever, in either direction,
much faster than any horse could gallop.  That, and
not th technical means (electricity, radio waves,
fiber optics, or any other), is the essence of
telecommunication.
   "It was the demand for rapid communications that
created the telecommunications system, not the other
way around.  Before Chappe, people who needed to send
a message used Paul Revere's method: they arranged a
signal in advance and lit a fire to send it.  Fire
signals and chains of beacons are mentiond in Homer's
Iliad, in Aeschylus's Agamemnon, and in the works of
Thuydides and Herodotus.  The Bible says: 'Oh ye
children of Benjamin, ... set up a sign of fire in
Bethhaccerem: for evil appeareth out of the north, and
great destruction' (Jer. [!] 6:1).  The Romans, better
organized, built 3, 197 watchtowers along the
Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts and used fire and
smoke signals to warn of pirates or enemy ships.
   "The tradition persisted right up to the French
Revolution....
   "It was not for lack of ideas that the system of
one-way prearranged signals persisted as long as it
did.  In the second century B.C., the Grek historian
Polybius proposed using a system of vases that could
be seen at an distance and corresponded to the letters
of the alphabet, but evidently nothing came of this
idea.  In May 1864, the philosopher and physicist
Robert Hooke spoke to the Royal Soviety of London on
'how to communicate one's mind at distances as in a
short time almost as a man can write what he would
have sent.'  He presented the results of experiments
in which he represented the letters of the alphabet
woth boards of different shapes that were to be placed
on hilltops so they could be seen at a distance with a
telescope....  In the course of the eighteenth
century, several other thinkers described clever
methods of communicating at a distance, but they did
not even get so far as to try them out.
   "What can we conclude from these abortive attempts?
 By the late seventeenth century, the idea of an
open-ended, bidirectional telecommunications system
was in the air.  But any serious experiments would
have required a substantial investment, and, for that,
the demand was lacking.  Until the 1790s, messengers
and the postal system met the everyday needs of
governments and mercahnts, and fire signals served for
emegrencies." (pp. 193-5)

   "Claude Chappe was a persistent man.  Starting in
1790, he tried several methods of communicating at a
distance....  Finally, he adopted the 'T,' a post
topped by a thirteen-foot-long board called a
regulateur, at both ends of which were six-foot
boards, or indicateurs: all three could be moved with
the aid of ropes and pulleys.  The regulateur could be
placed in four positions ... only the horizontal and
vertical positions were used for signalling, however. 
Each indicateur could be placed in seven poistions. 
Thus a total of ninety-eight positions of the arms
could be used for signals.  The arms were painted
black and placed on top of towersm steeples, or high
buildings.  Silhouetted against the sky, the devices
could be seen at a great distance.
   "Chappe first set up his devices in Paris, but they
were torn down by crowds fearful of royalist
intrigues.  In March 1792, he approached the
Legislative Assembly ... but was ignored.  A year
later, he tried again ....
   "As noted earlier, the experiment was a technical
success.  More important, it succeeded politically
....  French politics were at the height of their
revolutionary fervor....  In August, amid an
atmosphere of frenzied crisis, the deputies ordered
the construction of fifteen telegraph stations .... 
They appointed Claude Chappe ingenieur-telegraphe
under the Ministry of War ....
   "Chappe's optical telegraph was made of wood, iron,
ropes, and stone.  It involved no electricity or other
scientific innovation ....  what made it a technical
success was not its hardware but its software....
   "Chappe tried several different codes....
   "By using long codebooks and choosing the words and
phrases carefully so as to equalize the probability of
each position, Chappe was able to compensate for the
slow rate of transmission inherent in the hardware....
   "To operate such a system, with its complex codes
and many stations, required a skilled an efficient
administration....
   "The optical telegraph had two weaknesses.  One was
human, for it relied on the punctilious performance of
duty by every member of the organization.  Efficient
operation required quasi-military discipline ....  The
other weakness was natural: the system could not
operate at night or in rain or fog....
   "...  The electric telegraph that eventually
supplanted Chappe's system represented a less dramatic
improvement." (pp.195-7)
   
And see as well ...

http://people.deas.harvard.edu/~jones/cscie129/images/history/chappe.html

http://www.sil.si.edu/Exhibitions/Underwater-web/uw-optic-02.htm

And the dream of instantaneous communication across
infinte distances continues ...

http://www.msu.edu/user/malonemi/lbs333/quantum04.html

http://www.sciam.com/askexpert/physics/physics29.html

Okay, now, must ... host ... Chs. 29 and 30 ...







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