Talk:Optical telegraph

message: Notice:
:the sections "Article split?" and "Domel" have been moved to Talk:Semaphore, since the article has been split.
:the sections "Semaphore code space", "Total rewrite", "Externa link cleanup", "Copyrighted signals?", have been moved to Talk:Flag semaphore, since the article has been split.
--Once in a Blue Moon (talk) 21:13, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Untitled 2007 comment 

message: Someone should really add in distances between semaphore station to give readers an idea of how far and quickluy messages travelled.
178.54.232.147 (talk) 20:44, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Distance 

message: Isn't it a bit weird that Alexandre Dumas and Ernest Hemingway are mentioned under 'Popular culture'? These would, by any account, be 'high culture'. Although I am not proposing a category 'References in High Culture' it might be a good idea to change the heading to something else like 'References in Art & Litterature' or something. Or just 'References in fiction', how's that??
===Lord of the Rings ===
I think that semaphores where used in one of the Lord of the Rings novels/movies, although I need to verify this.  Any LoTR buffs?  GChriss 15:02, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There was a series of beacons in The Return of the King, which are a much simpler type of 'optical telegraph'. JeffUK 10:52, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

text: They're actually more akin to those originally used on The Great Wall of China--190.74.122.75 12:13, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  References in fiction 

message: I think that semaphores where used in one of the Lord of the Rings novels/movies, although I need to verify this.  Any LoTR buffs?  GChriss 15:02, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There was a series of beacons in The Return of the King, which are a much simpler type of 'optical telegraph'. JeffUK 10:52, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

text: They're actually more akin to those originally used on The Great Wall of China--190.74.122.75 12:13, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Lord of the Rings 

message: edit summary by user:diza
:no order ,one need to finish this article in order to know what it is about. mechnical arms are mentioned only 2-3 paragraph after they are introduced via ancient name ..etc'.)
--Dodo bird 18:41, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reason for rewrite 

message: Where does the information in the section "Relative Costs' come from?
There's some missing context here - for instance, I presume these figures are adjusted in line with inflation, given the size of the wages in comparison with the "twenty five sous per day" described in the previous paragraph?
The timing "at most ten hours a day" is contradicted by the previous paragraph (where it says that the signalmen must work "at present from half past three till half past eight"). --David Edgar 11:39, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Relative Costs section

message: The two pages Semaphore (comunication) and Semaphore (communication) are both based on the same article but have been copyedited into two different ways. They should be merged. -- JeLuF 10:17 Dec 31, 2002 (UTC)
I'm not sure we need disambiguation for this anyway -- see Talk:Semaphore -- Tarquin 10:28 Dec 31, 2002 (UTC)
I have also remove - A Manual of Signals: For The Use Of Signal Officers In The Field for being some thing about the army, not semaphore...209.247.21.165 14:25, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleanup 

message: Something to note, perhaps in the lead-in or later in the historical section:
* Telegraph first used in 1794, literally "that which writes at a distance," from the French télégraphe, from télé- meaning "far" (from Greek. tele-) + -graphe. The signaling device had been invented in France in 1791 by the brothers Chappe, who had called it tachygraphe, literally "that which writes fast," but the better name was suggested to them by French diplomat Comte André-François Miot de Mélito (1762-1841). The word was first applied in 1797 to an experimental electric telegraph (designed by Dr. Don Francisco Salva at Barcelona); the practical version was developed 1830s by Samuel Morse. Source: 
* Semaphore first used in 1816, probably from the French word sémaphore, literally meaning "a bearer of signals," ultimately from the Greek sema meaning "sign, signal" + phoros meaning "bearer," from pherein meaning "to carry." Source: 
A few things that struck me as being included in the article:
# Telegraph was used first; semaphore was 20 years later (according to this source). 
# The Chappe brothers originally named their invention tachygraphe. 
# The word Telegraph was picked up for the electric telegraph. 
# Apparently the french didn't use the word telegraph; instead going semaphore? I've been told that the French prefer their own terms for technical things instead of imported words (citing cultural pollution).
- Davandron | Talk 18:21, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Words and etymology 

message: I notice the cost breakdown is in US dollars of an unknown era.  Is there some way to discover the actual costs or, second best, to identify when the conversion was made or whether it was on the basis of wages or other kind of comparison?  Jim.henderson (talk) 14:17, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Relative cost 

message: Is a map of the French system available anywhere?  I think this is such a map, but no information is given as to its licensing and so on.  I think it'd be great to have a map showing the extent of the system.  TastyCakes (talk) 22:20, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Map of French system 

message: The article as a whole is written with acceptable organization although the description of the Chappe design is misleading and out of place. The format of the article being broken up by country of origin and use is helpful. The sources and credibility are lacking due to the small amount of references, none of which are used in backing the section on France which is the backbone of the article. The references used are credible and from scholarly locations, however vague they may be. 
The illustrations of Chappe and his semaphore tower are accurate although the picture of the tower near Saverne is misleading and doesn’t properly represent what an actual example looks like. The pictures is misleading due to the simple fact that the towers rarely stand alone and the picture fails to show the pivoting beams used for signaling because of the angle at which the photo was taken. The proper names for the arms are not used either, the main and vertical beams are called regulators and indicators respectively.
The section on History is a little vague and fails to mention or credit the Romans and the rest of the Mediterranean countries for their use of optical telegraphy while also leaving out the Native Americans and their deep history in signaling. The section on France is thorough, although the article says the first optical telegraph arrived in 1792 which is not totally accurate. The article as a whole has pretty solid information with the exception of History section. One positive aspect of the article is that it has not been marred by conflicting information and multiple contributors. HIST406-10110425205Brownley (talk) 20:29, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  History and France 

message: Surely this is a type of semaphore as well, according to the description? 92.20.125.234 (talk) 08:09, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Timeball Tower 

message: The section on the development of the Chappe system looks reasonable but is unreferenced.  This BBC reference, How Napoleon's semaphore telegraph changed the world, tells this story well, and supports the Lille and Conde statements, but needs to be incorporated, if the original reference for the para is not known. Onanoff (talk) 13:09, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  History of Chappe system 

message: caution should be used when using information from the map on http://www.vauxhallandkennington.org.uk/telegraph.shtml as the locations are slightly wrong. Woodcock Hill is shown as being south of St Albans when in fact it just north! There was no Semaphore Station in St Albans, I think what has happened is that someone has displayed the location address from being Woodcock Hill near St Albans to Woodcock Hill, St albans and hereby thinks they are two separate locations see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandridge. The Lilley Hoo station is also actually Telegraph Hill, being over a mile north of Lilley Hoo. Pandaplodder (talk) 13:18, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Link from the Optical Telegraph

message: "Incidental appearances of X in fiction" is not encyclopediac content for an article about X.  WP:NOTRIVIA is a policy that says Wikipedia is not to collect indiscriminate information. A recitation of incidental uses of a concept is of no value to informing users about the concept without explanation or commentary on the significance of each appearance.  We don't list every time the Coyote got conked on the head in the article on anvil, for  example. Just because it's 19th century trivia doesn't make it non-trivial. --Wtshymanski (talk) 19:27, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: This is not trivia. When Rodolphe Töpffer depicts a semaphore line in one of the first comic strips in history in 1831, this is encyclopedic. Stendhal,  Alexandre Dumas and Hector Malot are 19th century famous writers, and if they describe a semaphore line in one of their works, it is encyclopedic. All the other authors mentioned in the section are sufficiently famous to have their page in Wikipedia, and if they put in scene a historical or fictitious semaphore line, it is encyclopedic as well. Sapphorain (talk) 20:10, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: 19th century pop culture has more EV than 21st century pop culture? I'm looking at MOS:POPCULT and I don't understand. --Wtshymanski (talk) 01:06, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

text: Yes, trivia should go.  Trivial content about trivia in popular culture should go too. However references in popular culture to the topic are permissible, provided that they're relevant and substantial. So popular culture where the topic becomes a plotline (as described here) is reasonable, where a passing mention usually isn't. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:13, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Trivia sections are deprecated

message: Do you have a source for the claim you inserted with this edit that the claimed London to Plymouth transit time of less than eight minutes was "suspect" because the route crossed time zones?  Or is that your own surmise?  The admiralty of that period had a huge investment in establishing the difference between local noon and Greenwich noon for navigation purposes, so it sounds unlikely that they would make such a schoolboy error. SpinningSpark 17:12, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Also, presumably the way this was worked out was that London said "Hey P, txt me back rn" and 16 minutes later Plymouth messaged back with "'Sup? I'm looking at the sea". Standard time zones aren't needed for Round-trip_delay_time.  I'd strike the relevent text... Joe (talk) 09:31, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
replies: text:  Since user:RobinClay has declined to justify that edit after we have waited a month, I think it safe to assume that it is WP:SYNTH so I have deleted it. SpinningSpark 13:14, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Time zones and message speed 

message: I have some serious doubts over the correctness of the Chappe code shown in this article.  The Commons page says it is sourced from this site which does not appear to meet our requirements for a reliable source.  As far as I can make out, it is a personal website and gives no indication where the information came from.  Shaffner's Telegraph Manual says that the codes for dispatches (rather than control codes) were always sent with the regulator (the central bar) in the same diagonal position (but written either horizontally or vertically depending on whether the regulator was returned to the horizontal or vertical position afterwards, thus doubling the number of code points).  The regulator in our chart is in all four of its possible positions.  This book gives the Foy-Breguet telegraph code, which was supposed to mimic the Chappe code.  The regulator is shown in the same position for all code points (it was actually incapable of moving in the Foy-Breguet instruments) and is completely different from our chart.  The same code is shown on this well-researched page by Professor James B. Calvert of the University of Denver.  In short, I think it should be dumped or replaced as it is highly dubious and has probably already spread all over the internet. SpinningSpark 12:49, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chappe code accuracy 

message: I removed this from the article;
: 
How is a vibration generator connected with the optical telegraph? SpinningSpark 20:02, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vibration system 

message: I propose to rename this article Optical telegraph.  The article was originally at that title, but got merged to this page after a fork article got created firstly at Semaphore then Semaphore line and finally Semaphore telegraph.  Pinging user:Jim.henderson who questioned the name change here].  My rationale for the name change is that shutter telegraphs are not called semaphore.  Only telegraphs with moveable arms like Chappe's are called this (and frequently without the telegraph suffix).  Many sources clearly make this distinction;
* "The Shutter Telegraph...Edelcrantz had decided to abandon the Chappe-like design of a semaphore telegraph with articulated arms..."—Holzmann & Pehrson
* "...the superiority of what is called the Semaphore over the Shutter Telegraph...is now generally acknowledged."—Charles Pasley 
* "Two optical telegraphs, built by and for government, were of particular importance: the semaphore of the First Republic, France, 1794; and the shutter telegraph of the Admiralty, England, 1795." The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1994.
* "The Swedish mechanical telegraph differed from the French one in that it did not use the semaphore system"—Greene 
It is clear that either the article is at the wrong title, or that the optical telegraph page should never have been merged into it. SpinningSpark 23:46, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Propose renaming 

message: "Semaphore lines were a precursor of the electrical telegraph, which replaced them half a century later, and was also cheaper, faster, and more private."
Where did you people learn to write, or read for that matter?
I assume the meaning here is that semaphore lines are older than the electrical telegraph, and that the electrical telegraph was cheaper, faster, and more private than the semaphore lines had been, but that is not what is so inelegantly stated. Gimelgort (talk) 16:39, 2 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sentence structure 

message: Specifically, this paragraph, from the section [i]n popular culture:
I think the sentence starting with "[i]n Chapter 60" would be a good place to split it. Could anyone please tell me if this is a good idea? Thylacine24 (talk) 02:48, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: This paragraph mentions 4 very different works by 4 authors. To split it in just 2 paragraphs would be completely arbitrary and would not help the reading in any way. In my opinion it should either stay as it is, or be split in 5 (introductory sentence, and then one small paragraph for each work, Toepffer, Stendhal, Dumas, Malot).--Sapphorain (talk) 07:41, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Found paragraph that might need splitting