 The Four-Corner Method was developed in the 1920s to allow people to more easily look up characters by the shape, and remains in use today as a Chinese input method for computers.The first telegraph code for Chinese was brought into use soon after the Great Northern Telegraph Company ( / Dàběi Diànbào Gōngsī) introduced telegraphy to China in 1871.Septime Auguste Viguier, a Frenchman and customs officer in Shanghai, published a codebook (Viguier 1872), succeeding Danish astronomer Hans Carl Frederik Christian Schjellerup’s earlier work.