For the vast majority of human history a message could only travel as fast as a human meaning it was normal to wait days or even months to receive a very important message.
Very slightly faster methods did exist. Smoke signals, water clocks, beacons, flags. But these only worked for predetermined messages.
If you wanted to send a completely original thought such as "Thursday my dungarees fish basket holibobs" That was impossible.
Until… In 17-1777, a French chap called Claude Chappe invented a way to send long distance messages using an alphabet made up of symbols that could be seen from a very long way away.
On a hilltop, one person operated a machine that could rotate the position of two large sticks.
And on another hilltop, a second person would copy the shape relaying it onto the next hill and so on and so on until it was finally decoded at the other end.
Chappe called his system the "telegraph" From the French "télégraphe" From the Greek "télégraphe".
It was now possible to send a message from Paris to Lille in just 12 minutes rather than the usual 12 hours. At its peak, the French Telegraph Network looked like this.
This is the earliest example of a physical network built to transmit information at high speeds across long distances. It was the beginning of the internet.
So why aren't we still using mechanical telegraphs today? Bad question. The flaws were obvious.
