Email In the 18th Century

morphovar forwards a writeup in Low-tech Magazine recounting an almost-forgotten predecessor to email and packet-switched messaging: the optical telegraph. The article maps out some of the European networks but provides no details of those built in North America in the early 1800s. Man-in-the-middle attacks were dead easy. "More than 200 years ago it was already possible to send messages throughout Europe and America at the speed of an airplane — wireless and without need for electricity. The optical telegraph network consisted of a chain of towers ... placed 5 to 20 kilometers apart from each other. Every tower had a telegrapher, looking through a telescope at the previous tower in the chain. If the semaphore on that tower was put into a certain position, the telegrapher copied that symbol on his own tower. A message could be transmitted from Amsterdam to Venice in one hour's time. A few years before, a messenger on a horse would have needed at least a month's time to do the same."

Comments

Ah, Clacks

[The Grey Ghost]

Apparently where Terry Pratchett got the clacks - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clacks

"Minor" mistake but...

[RobertM1968]

"provides no details of those built in North America in the early 1800s. Man-in-the-middle attacks were dead easy"

The "early 1800's" is the 19th Century - not 18th.

Re:"Minor" mistake but...

[hpa]

[1] I've read they did it for efficiency because internally it multiplies the index to get the starting offset in an array of equal-sized elements. If you start at one, then indexing requires a subtraction, or else waste an element, which may have mattered in the 60's when RAM cost an arm and a leg.

The compiler is more than capable of doing this transformation. The real reason is because the vast majority of algorithms are easier to describe with the first index as zero -- this was a lesson learned from FORTRAN, which started indexing at 1.

Re:did china do this as well on the great wall?

[AlphaDrake]

Link

Common in Italy in the middle agaes

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole cost of Southern Italy is full of towers that were used a light based communication/alarm system, especially against the raids of the so called saracens (people from the Islamic nation from the south) in the middle ages. I believe that a similar system was also used in Roman and possibly Greek times. The distance between the towers is also similar, 5-20Km.

Sempahore towers

[Uomograsso]

There is a reconstructed tower at Chatley Heath near Guildford, England, which was part of the route from the admiralty in London down to Portsmouth.

There are still some left in Barbados:

http://photo.clifford.ac/2007/Barbados.October/tn/dscn2211.jpg.index.html

and here is what you see when looking at Cotton Tower from Grendade Hall:
http://photo.clifford.ac/2004/Barbados.April/tn/p4130674.jpg.index.html

--
Alan clifford

Sorry, but...

[djupedal]

The Great Wall in China put similar means to use hundreds of years earlier.

Colored flags, whistling arrows, fires & hand signals all worked as part of a communication chain that spanned greater distances as well (6,400 km).

And 'man-in-the-middle' attacks were usually over before they began :)

taggers are fucking illiterate

[toby]

BEACONS of Gondor, for Sauron's sake.

BEACONS.

If you can't afford a dictionary, rednecks, at least Google.

Re:The Count of Monte Cristo

[tolworthy]

It's not just the movie. These message towers play a key part in the novel. The Count ruins one of his enemies, a banker, by sending a false message about a foreign war.

Re:Spam?

[Anonymous Coward]

Note: A wanker is the term for a person who masterbates. "A wanker wanks".

I live in fear that this may be marked informative.

Re:Chappe's telegraph and buiding of a fortune

[AI0867]

actually, the story was more interesting
-Rothschilds get information early
-other people know rothschilds get the information early
-rothschilds dump all their stock
-everyone else dumps their stock
-stock crashes
-rothschilds buy everything

massive stock manipulation, but I guess that was legal back then.

(or at least this is the version I heard)

Re:Spam?

[AKAImBatman]

It is not very suprising that this system was ultimately replaced soon after electrical telegraphs had become available.

Actually, it wasn't. The electrical telegraph had a very rocky start. Both France and Britain had optical telegraphs in place and were uninterested in investing in this new "electric" form of telegraph. Especially since those who worked on electric telegraphs were often untrained quacks.

It took a relatively new nation that lacked a telegraph (i.e. the United States) to cause the electric version to catch on. Even there, it took a while before the possibilities were really explored. Once it caught on, though, it caught on like wildfire. Didn't take long for an international telegraph to get setup, and for ticker-tape machines to appear.

For those interested in the topic, I highly recommend the book The Victorian Internet. It is well written, well researched, and tells a fascinating tale of the telegraph development that parallels the development of the Internet. On top of that, it sheds light on how the telegraph affected computer design and the communications protocols we use today. (e.g. ASCII is derived from the telegraph codeset called "Baudot Codes". Named for the inventor, Émile Baudot. He also has a measure of transmission speed named after him called "Baud". As in, a "300 Baud Modem". )

Re:Spam?

[Alioth]

Terry Pratchett did - his recent book "Going Postal", one of the main "characters" of the story is the clacks - the Discworld optical telegraph network. It's a fun book.