OCR Text |
Show The Original Telegraph. Claude Chappe, who drowned hhn self lu a well on January 3 a hundred hun-dred years ngo, wus described In his time as "the Inventor of tho telo-graph," telo-graph," s.ijs the !ndon Telegraph. It was not tho electric telegraph that wo know, of com He, but a very primitive prim-itive wireless contrivance, a semaphore. sema-phore. In fact, consisting of on upright up-right post, a tiatisverso bar on tho top and two arms working on pivots at the ends of thU bar By means of a code nnd the placing of a series of these posts bo that each could be seen from tho next, messages were carried over fifty leagues In a quarter quar-ter of an hour. The French legislative assembly adopted tho system; but insinuations in-sinuations that Chappe had stolen It from others preyed upon his mind and drove him to btilcldo, |