Claude Chappe

Claude Chappe was a French inventor who in 1792 demonstrated a practical semaphore system that eventually spanned all of France. Born in Brulon, Sarthe, in 1763, he was raised for church service but lost his sinecure during the French Revolution, and he developed the system with his four unemployed brothers. It used a series of towers within line of sight of one another, each with a wooden mast bearing pivoted crossarms that an operator set to spell out text messages in semaphore code, read through a telescope by the next tower. It was the first practical telecommunications system of the industrial age and was used until the 1850s, when electric telegraph systems replaced it. He died in 1805.