WI: Optical Telegraph in 1684

telynk

Ok, through a quick browse on wikipedia, I noticed that Robert Hooke proposed an optical telegraph line to the Royal Society in 1684. It was turned down, but what if it had been adopted? Would the British have had any use for it?

I guess really my real question is how early would optical telegraphy be feasible/useful for the powerful states of Europe: Britain, France, HRE/Austria, Spain before the Succession War, etc. Technologically you don't need anything more than the ability to build towers and basic mechanisms, but obviously administratively there are some hurdles like how do you find the income to keep enough telegraph operators employed... So, any thoughts on what prior developments would be necessary would be interesting....

What would you call a 1700s world with 1800s technology thrown in? Wig-punk?
 

Pesterfield

Something like Morse Code would be helpful. No special signaling devices are needed and the same code can be used with flags, mirrors, fire, etc.
 
Valena

Valena

Shall I post a ton of stuff we had for this in Apollon et Dianae draft? Basically we got two systems (land and naval) complete with pictures. First line - 1686, London-Windsor, second ... London-Chatham IIRC, need to find relevant thread (or was it London-Portsmouth)?
 

Riain

Banned
The British had a signalling system along the Lines of Torres Vedras, a message could be transmitted along the 46km lines in 7 minutes.
 

Dathi THorfinnsson

telynk said:
Technologically you don't need anything more than the ability to build towers and basic mechanisms,
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Actually, to be feasible, you really need telescopes in every tower. But that should be possible by 1684.

As pointed out, it's a very expensive proposition - so you have to find a necessity or economic use for it.

I could see trading houses paying some of the expenses if semaphored news could be relayed from e.g. Cornwall to London about the arrival of cargo from the west. Of course, since this would mean an advantage trading in the City, you need the Stock Exchange to be a major thing, AND there to be enough cargo coming from the West for it to make it viable.
 
Thande

Thande

Donor
Not directly relevant to the OP's (very interesting) POD, but you might be interested in this old thread, which did optical telegraphy a few hundred years earlier.
 

telynk

Fabius Maximus said:
Surely the most obvious use of an optical telegraph system would be for military communications?
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Yeah, but if it was just for military communications, I can't see it persisting in peace time. Maybe towers would be built and operators would be trained in peacetime, but they would only be operation during times of war. I think to have a actual network become financially feasible, you probably need to be able to contract it out for civilian use.
 
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