de la Science, Louis Figuier, 1868 [1] Broadband Telecommunications Technologies and Management Figure 2.2 Chappe codes. Source: 'Telegraph'. For explanatory text, see entry on 'TELEGRAPH', volume 35 of the Cyclopdia [3] 1/120 = 0.008 character/s. A 50-letter text would therefore take about 100 min to send. Unimaginably slow by today's standard, it was a huge improvement compared with the fastest alternative of a horse-mounted message courier. Moreover, an operator at a relay station could start on transmission after receiving each letter and did not have to wait for the complete message. Therefore the end-to-end transmission delay was a direct function of the number of relay points. The following example illustrates the Chappe telegraph's superior speed of message transmis- sion. The Lille-Paris link was used to relay the news of the capture of Condé-sur-l'Escaut from the Austrians in a time of less than one hour. A horse-mounted message courier brought the same news some 20 hours later. Clearly the French government understood the national security value of the Chappe system and a net- work was commissioned throughout France. Figure 2.3 shows the extent of this network by 1850. Wider adaption would have been expected except that a newer, more efficient technology was invented: the electrical telegraph. Samuel Morse witnessed the operation of visual telegraphs and understood the value of rapid messaging that telegraphy enabled during a trip to Europe. He also learned about the experiments of Ampere and that electricity could be used to send messages. Based on these ideas he built and Technology, Business and Policy Anvers Calais Dunkerque Bruxelles Boulogne Lille Mayer Cherbourg Chalons Paris Dreux St Brieux Avranches Strasboun Brest Saint Malo Lunévillé Rennes Tonerre Huningue Tours Dijon Nantes Besançon Chalons sur Saône Poitièrs Angoulème Blaye Turin Valence Bordeaux Nîmes Avignon Toulouse Bayonne Montpellier Marseille Behobie Narbonne Toulon Perpignan 200 Kilomètres Le réseau Chappe en France Directions (dat