San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1895-08-16
ANCIENT TELEGRAPHY.
Devices to Send News SWIFTLY Before the
Age of Electricity.

Devices to Send News SWIFTLY Before the
Age of Electricity.
The old telegraph stations of France
are interesting relics of the past, and,
where they have been allowed to re-
main, form feature of the Landscape.
They were of two kinds, the square
towers and the round towers. They
consisted of two stories, and the index
signals, of wood or light iron, were
mounted on the top of pole on the
roof. A ladder ran up this pole, so
that the signals might be reached and
moved by hand. The telegraphers
were provided with telescopes, and
there was always somebody on watch
on the roof to note signals made at the
neighboring stations. The progress of
a message at night was naturally
slower than the day transmission. The
words were fewer at night, also, be-
cause the small lanterns affixed to the
indexes could occupy only a certain
number of positions without being ex-
tinguished.
The first Bonaparte extended the line
of these stations to Milan and then to
Mayence, in Germany. They went no
further. Soon the French armies be-
gan to retreat to the land from which
they came, and as they retired they
fred their telegraph posts to prevent
the enemy from using them.
One writer has stated that Alexan-
der's quickest means of sending mes
e,-as ,ras nv, 70 81 bnreae and that No
poleon, two millenniums later, was no
better off. This informant, like mill
lions to-day, was ignorant of aerial
telegraphy's half century of existence.
As with electrical telegraphy, SO
with aerial telegraphy, the early at
tempts were legion. AS far back as
the seventeenth century a scientific at
tempt at long distance telegraphy was
made by the savant Amontons- The
author Fontelle has written of these
experiments. He states that the APP
paratus was clever continuance, per-
hitting of the transmission of mes
sage from Paris across the Alps to
Rome in the then incredibly brief time
of three hours, and this without any
body knowing the nature of the mes
sage between the Italian and French
capitals.
The procedure consisted in placing
at several consecutive spots men who,
having perceived through long-dis-
tance telescopes certain signals made
at one post, transmitted such signals
to the next post, and so on from post to
post, and these different signals were
so many letters of an alphabet of secret
ciphers The key to these was known
only to the parties interested at Paris
and at the city one thousand miles
away. The maximum range Of the
telescope constituted the distance be-
tween the different posts, the fewer Of
which the better for rapid transmits
sion. Some experiments were sue
oessfully made over little stretch Of
country, but the vice-consumed func-
tionaries of the time pronounced the
Amontons project "impracticable," and
the discouraged inventor abandoned
the idea.
Caesar, in his commentaries" re-
lates how, during the invasion of Gaul,
the inhabitants gave warning of his
approach by burning fires at night.
These signals were called 'huchees."
In the daytime the old GaIs resorted
to cries. Thus, a number of men, sta
toned at certain intervals apart over a
long stretch of country, would shout
their warnings from one to the other.
This species of mouth-to-mouth teleg-
raphy answered so well and the dis.
patches travelled so quickly that Caesar
states how, between the rising and the
setting of the sun the natives would
send a verbal message a distance of
over fifty leagues. Magazine