9 Nov
2006
9 Nov
'06
1:13 a.m.
Hi,
Charles Fox said:
At 05:30 AM 11/8/2006, you wrote:
The Romans used flaming torches and simple water-clocks, but they're
not electrical. I think electric light sgnalling had to wait for the
light bulb, first working examples 1860 or so, but carbon arc lamps
were somewhat earlier, I think.
--
Cheers,
Stan Barr stanb at dial.pipex.com
The future was never like this!
I wonder if there were any electrically-operated
semaphore stations
around which pre-date wired telegraphy? Most countries had networks
of optical semaphores which could of course route a message (the
original idea seems to have cropped up in the 1600's) - but to my
knowledge they were all manual and only operable in daylight,
despite electricity being available long before the last ones closed
(mid 1800's I think). However it seems strange if the transition was
made straight to wired telegraphy with no intermediate system using
electric light.
cheers
Jules
Didn't the Indians use smoke signals? Also, I believe I
have read that in the middle ages in Europe they used bonfires to signal.