Such a line would cost a fortune to build, to train all of the qualified personnel and more importantly to maintain, while it is theoretically possible what advantage would the Romans and Chinese gain from this? Spreading Christianity and Confucianism? They can do that by sending missionaries. Also imagine how many mistakes could happen if the translators make a small mistake and the next one makes another one... It would be extremely unreliable
Roman Optics?
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Although not one continuous structure I would argue such a system would be a wonder of the world (after all the great wall of China is not one continuous structure) and the most impressive for that matter
Wonders of the World - Wikipedia
How more so than a Roman road or a small fort/fortified watch tower on the Rhine or Danube borders?
Let's see, 12 relays per 100 km (taking the upper average, real thing might me closer to 7-8 per 100km in my opinion), 4,000 kilometers rounded from Rome to Doura Europeos through the Balkans, Byzantium and Antioch ... 480 relays or so.
I don't quite know how many people are needed, but let's say 5 per relay. That's half a legion worth of manpower, the compare with the number of legions sitting year round on the whole length of the Rhine and Danube borders...
Then, upkeep of this kind of infrastructure was often shared with or left to local authorities if I remember correctly. Like upkeep of an acqueduct, a bridge, or a road.
The most costly equipment, piece wise, in all of it would be the telescopes. But their practical purposes made them susceptible of mass use by the military and merchant ships, so the number of telescope ending up in the relay towers if this system are only going to be a small part of the production.
Overall, there is a strong probability the system is going to pay for itself through long term use. Also, whatever budget was used to maintain the Cursus Publicus running well into the 5th century is probably going to be used for this system, as physical courriers are not going to be as needed.
There is a difference: the fortifications were useful to defend the Empire while this line of fast communication is absolutely useless, tell me what use would have a Roman Emperor to exchange a few messages with the Chinese one
You don't need to go that far to make it useful.
Just knowing what happens on the border with Persia within the day, or conducting direct diplomacy with Ctesiphon is largely enough. They can serve to mobilize and dispatch within days not weeks or months resources, legions from one corner of the Empire to another, to face an invasion or put down a revolt.
Or trade wise, across the Empire...
Warn such or such ship has arrived safe and sound to its destination.
Conduct long distance proto-banking activities, trade transactions, speculation...
EDIT : The fortresses of the Limes are investments that are only productive when there is an attack to be defeated, else most of the time they are just money sinkholes. A fast communication system meanwhile is an infrastructure that has a lot more potential to actually generate, concrete and tangible revenue through tolls for private, non state use.
Warn such or such ship has arrived safe and sound to its destination.
Conduct long distance proto-banking activities, trade transactions, speculation...
EDIT : The fortresses of the Limes are investments that are only productive when there is an attack to be defeated, else most of the time they are just money sinkholes. A fast communication system meanwhile is an infrastructure that has a lot more potential to actually generate, concrete and tangible revenue through tolls for private, non state use.
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Are you joking with this? You fail to see how a fast communication system that can warn the emperor within hours if there's an attack could be useful? On top of that, it would greatly enhance banking and the spread of other information, such as a famine or natural disaster. It would make rebellion much harder. Do you think the road system was useless? No? Then why would this be?
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So how fast is it with weather involved? Are each segment also equipped with riders that have to wait to send messages fragments? How expensive is it to feed and stock all these stations-especially the remote ones? It sounds like an endeavor like the Great Wall but internal vs actually paying for frontier fortifications.
I was just not understanding the need to create this system all the way to China, in the Roman Empire this system makes sense however communication with the Chinese Emperor doesn't give you any profit and wastes a lot of money.
If you can successfully create this system (which is not given), have it being reliable and it is not too costly then yes it would make sense, however I doubt that those three requirements are fulfilled.
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I did not say it needed to be created as such. I was merely projecting a potential long term evolution, within a few centuries of the first lines being built.
Closer to home, Rome would have great use of fast communications of a Chappe telegraph network to improve border defense, which was notoriously difficult with thousands of kilometers of border to watch and defend. Being able to communicate all along its length within a day from report going up to orders flowing down would have allowed a much more efficient use of manpower, be it at theater or empire level. Structurally, it also allows a greater degree of control of the central government in Rome over the provinces, which is something any empire spanning thousands of kilometers is much needing.
The same applies to the Persian and Chinese empires.
As the technology spreads, and the knowledge of even the basics of such a communication network, it's pretty much guaranteed the Persians first would copy the Romans, and you'd get lines of relays reaching the far corners of the Persian empire in Khwarezm, the Caucasus and upper Mesopotamia down to the capitals of Ctesiphon and Susa.
As for China, besides the obvious need to administer a wide country, their control of the Tarim basin, fluctuating according to the fortunes of such or such dynasty, would be greatly made easier with such a line. The Chinese would thus get this technology from the Persians, with whom they had relations; technology, knowledge exchange was a thing back in the ancient times, along the Silk Road (silkworms smuggled out of China by Byzantine spies in the 6th century, or paper through the Arabs in the 8th century), so this technology making its way from Persia to Luoyang would be plausible. The Han dynasty, or the Tang, would probably build a network of semaphores, and obviously one line to the Tarim basin.
All you are left between these three, Roman, Persian and Chinese networks, are short trunks without relays: over the Euphrates frontier between the Romans and the Persians, and over the Tian Shan mountains between Persian Khwarezm and Chinese Tarim. So far, I'm only speaking about organic growth of distinct semaphore networks, and the short gap there would be in between, gaps that would not be all to implausible to see closed.
Due to diplomatic and geographic proximities between Roman and Persian empires, it's pretty much a given a connection between Rome and Ctesiphon would happen, a "red telephone" between Imperator and Shahanshah. Central Asia would take more time since it was remote and hard to control for both Chinese and Persians, but the existence of the semaphore line across Persia to Ctesiphon, facilitating Persian control in the region, or Chinese control in the Tarim, would help bring about such occasions.
(Assuming this system can be created in the way you imagined it)
Well the Romans would start their decline during those centuries and I don't think that this technology would change this as it would either not be developed enough or the Romans would still be in internal turmoil therefore knowing that the Barbarians are coming doesn't mean that a legion can be sent to crush them and because a weak central government can't maintain this system.
Assuming the Romans manage to survive longer than OTL, this revolutionary technology would change things but very slowly as the cost of building such a system is immense and because they wouldn't accept this new system immediately
It depends on how late you suppose telescope technology emerges.
With a few small tweaks, you can have an earlier development of magnifying glasses/reading stones (Nimrud lenses, 8th century BC) into eyeglasses during the ancient greek classical era (5th-4th century BC, Aristophanes mentions them in his play The Clouds), and during the 3rd and 2nd century bc, they evolve toward telescopes (let's say Archimedes' don't only use mirrors to burn Roman ships around Syracuse..), and these are again perfected by Romans thereafter.
...
Come the mid first century, fresh from his victories in the civil war and dictator for life, Julius Ceasar, always an innovative mind, orders a line of towers built from Antioch to the Euphrates in preparation of his future Parthian campaign, and another from Rome over to Liguria, up the Rhone valley, towards the new Lower Rhine border, to better control the Gallic conquests. The work is interrupted by his assassination and the new civil wars, but resumed and completed under Augustus, who initiates a line from Alexandria to upper Egypt, so he can better control the new and wealthy province. When Claudius' generals invade Britain in 43 AD, they are in almost direct contact with Rome and report daily on their progresses, and semaphore even allow to communicate across the Dover strait, with relay semaphores built after the legions, connecting to future Londinium and Camulodunum. The lines are critical to Romans in the Parthian War of 58-62 and Corbulo's victories, after which the Parthians begin building their own lines. Hadrian's reign sees a consolidation of the now empire sprawling semaphore network, and he and the Parthian kings regularly conduct diplomacy through this mean...
Now, of course I totally handwave butterflies, but for the sake of familiarity and expediency, I'd use this as an example of a frame for the development of this technology, like I did for steam engines in another thread.
With a few small tweaks, you can have an earlier development of magnifying glasses/reading stones (Nimrud lenses, 8th century BC) into eyeglasses during the ancient greek classical era (5th-4th century BC, Aristophanes mentions them in his play The Clouds), and during the 3rd and 2nd century bc, they evolve toward telescopes (let's say Archimedes' don't only use mirrors to burn Roman ships around Syracuse..), and these are again perfected by Romans thereafter.
...
Come the mid first century, fresh from his victories in the civil war and dictator for life, Julius Ceasar, always an innovative mind, orders a line of towers built from Antioch to the Euphrates in preparation of his future Parthian campaign, and another from Rome over to Liguria, up the Rhone valley, towards the new Lower Rhine border, to better control the Gallic conquests. The work is interrupted by his assassination and the new civil wars, but resumed and completed under Augustus, who initiates a line from Alexandria to upper Egypt, so he can better control the new and wealthy province. When Claudius' generals invade Britain in 43 AD, they are in almost direct contact with Rome and report daily on their progresses, and semaphore even allow to communicate across the Dover strait, with relay semaphores built after the legions, connecting to future Londinium and Camulodunum. The lines are critical to Romans in the Parthian War of 58-62 and Corbulo's victories, after which the Parthians begin building their own lines. Hadrian's reign sees a consolidation of the now empire sprawling semaphore network, and he and the Parthian kings regularly conduct diplomacy through this mean...
Now, of course I totally handwave butterflies, but for the sake of familiarity and expediency, I'd use this as an example of a frame for the development of this technology, like I did for steam engines in another thread.
Accuracy increases the more the range of possible messages is restricted - if you have a limited number of one-shot signals, those signals can look more visually distinct from one another, reducing the likelihood of errors. If multiple signals per message are needed, the chances of an error messing with the message increase.
Let's also not forget that weather will at times completely break the line of sight, requiring either patience or messaging between stations on horseback, or both.
If such a technology isn't too expensive and practical then sure, however would this technology be able to save the Roman Empire? I consider that it wouldn't because the problem wasn't in finding the barbaric invaders it was to send an army to crush them.
When you are sending the message that Barbarians are coming it would be practical, but when you have to talk about foreign policy...
There are so many opportunities for this. Off the top of my head, I'd go with this one:
With semaphore signalling, Rome would have reinforcements arrive sooner, affecting some battles in their favour, while others would be unaffected by virtue of their outcomes being decided before reinforcements arrive (positively or negatively). Some "already-lost" battles would still have the benefit of minimized losses, by allowing an victorious enemy less leeway to loot/pillage/capitalize generally on their victory.
And over time, Rome starts to rely on that. Complacency sets in. Perhaps enemies coordinate with signalling of their own, perhaps they coordinate without. So Rome's peak lasts longer, but the suddenness of the crash at the end would be far more dramatic. Fewer armies are maintained, relying on reinforceability, and when multiple armies are simultaneously under attack, each calling the next up or down the line for reinforcements, it's slaughter.
The problem wasn't in the armies or in the speed of reinforcements, the problem was that the legions supposed to defend the region went to Rome because their general decided to become emperor. Reinforcements aren't coming quicker as the postal system could inform the central government about the incoming enemies in a matter of days, the problem was that the central governments didn't have any troops to spare and that legions don't go any faster.
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I see what you mean, because you're looking at the OTL Fall of Rome.
I'm not. I'm picturing decades to a century or more of semaphore use tweaking deployments of legions - with neither start nor end of this changed pattern at any specified time. Whenever you situate this pattern, reliance on a semaphore network could amplify the legions' effectiveness against uncoordinated enemies, while overreliance on it might amplify Rome's vulnerability to coordinated ones.
I don't believe this scenario is very realistic and the causes of the Fall of Rome aren't removed by this system.
Fair. I'm admittedly speculating beyond my limited expertise.
Wholeheartedly agreed on this: I'm only enabling a different fall of Rome. And so many of those are possible.