Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Brûlon, Pays de la Loire, France
About Claude Chappe
- Claude Chappe (25 December 1763 – 23 January 1805) was a French inventor who in 1792 demonstrated a practical semaphore system that eventually spanned all of France.
- His system consisted of a series of towers, each within line of sight of others, each supporting a wooden mast with two crossarms on pivots that could be placed in various positions.
- The operator in a tower moved the arms to a sequence of positions, spelling out text messages in semaphore code.
- The operator in the next tower read the message through a telescope, then passed it on to the next tower.
- This was the first practical telecommunications system of the industrial age, and was used until the 1850s when electric telegraph systems replaced it.
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