CLAUDE CHAPPE
COMMEMORATION IN FRANCE.
ANNIVERSARY OF REVOLUTION.
Coincident with the commemoration in France of the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the French Revolution, the memory of Chappe has been honoured, for it was thanks to his invention of a system of semaphore signalling that the news of the victory of Valmy, won by the army of the Republic, was “flashed” to Paris.
It was Chappe who thought of setting up semaphore stations on hill tops and signalling messages rapidly across sections of the country. He astounded his fellow countrymen by making it possible for a message to be sent from Valenciennes to Paris, a distance of 160 miles, in thirteen minutes.
A tablet has just been unveiled in the rue du Telegraphe, the highest street in Paris, which, by the way, got its name from Chappc’s instrument, commemorating the fact that here was set up the first semaphore outside Paris as it was then.
It is interesting to note that one of the best known of French broadcasting stations, Radio —P.T.T., is in a building built around the tower on which Chappe’s semaphore telegraph stood, and his mast with its weird swinging arms is today replaced by a wireless aerial rising high above the roof.
Chappe met much opposition, and did away with himself at the age of 42. He has his statue in Paris in the neighbourhood of his first signalling station.
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/WAITA19390928.2.100
Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka
Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 September 1939, Page 8
Word count
Tapeke kupu
234CLAUDE CHAPPE Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 September 1939, Page 8
Using this item
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
Stuff Ltd is the copyright owner for the Wairarapa Times-Age. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of Stuff Ltd. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.