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The Rise and Fall of the Visual Telegraph (2017)
Sometimes we go looking for blog ideas, and sometimes they come along and tap us persistently on the shoulder. This one did – three times. First, I spotted an “advertorial” in a 1912 issue of a sma…
A few days later, I was hunting for a postcard in our collection and I ran across this one of “La Tour du Télégraphe” in Montmartre, sitting on top of what appear to be the ruins of a church. An early attempt at a demonstration in Paris came to grief when a Revolutionary mob attacked Chappe and demolished his device, believing him to be using it to communicate with the imprisoned Louis XVI. Paris gave Claude Chappe his due in 1893, on the hundredth anniversary of his successful demonstration, erecting a statue to him, posed in a jaunty attitude, at the intersection of the boulevards Raspail and Saint-Germain.
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