Exposition Universelle (1889)
The Exposition Universelle of 1889 was a world's fair held in Paris, from 6 May to 31 October 1889. It was held during the year of the 100th anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, an event considered symbolic of the beginning of the French Revolution; the fair included a reconstruction of the Bastille and its surrounding neighborhood, but with the interior courtyard covered with a blue ceiling decorated with fleur-de-lys and used as a ball room and gathering place. The exhibition was "used as showcases for scientific and technological advances, but often included exhibits of objects from the past, including prehistoric times." The 1889 Exposition covered a total area of 0.96 km2, including the Champ de Mars, the Trocadéro, the quai d'Orsay, a part of the Seine and the Invalides esplanade. Transport around the Exposition was provided by the 3 kilometre 600 mm gauge Decauville railway at Exposition Universelle, it was claimed. Some of the locomotives used on this line saw service on the Chemins de Fer du Calvados and the Diégo Suarez Decauville railway.
The main symbol of the Fair was the Eiffel Tower. The 1889 fair was held on the Champ de Mars in Paris, the site of the earlier Paris Universal Exhibition of 1867, would be the site of the 1900 exposition. Since the lifts had not been completed when the Exposition opened, the first visitors had to walk up to the second floor platform. Workers had worked through the night the day before the exhibition opened to complete the necessary construction needed to safely allow patrons to set foot upon the structure; when speaking of the dedicated workers, M. Salles, the son-in-law of Eiffel made the statement that "no soldier on the battle field deserved better mention than these humble toilers, will never go down in history." No one other than construction personnel were allowed higher than the second floor platform. An significant building constructed for the fair was the Galerie des machines, designed by architect Ferdinand Dutert and engineer Victor Contamin, it was reused at the exposition of 1900 and destroyed in 1910.
At 111 meters, the Galerie spanned the longest interior space in the world at the time, using a system of hinged arches made of steel or iron. Although described as being constructed of steel, it was made of iron. There is an extensive description, with illustrations, of the Exposition's two famous buildings in the British journal Engineering. A follow-up report appears a late issue with this summation: the exhibition will be famous for four distinctive features. In the first place, for its buildings the Eiffel tower and the Machinery Hall; the 28 June issue of Engineering mentions a remarkable "Great Model of the Earth" created by Theodore Villard and Charles Cotard. There were unseasonal thunderstorms in Paris during that summer of 1889, causing some distress to the canopies and decoration of the exposition, as reported by the Engineering issues at that time; the Exhibition included a building by the Paris architect Pierre-Henri Picq. This was an elaborate iron and glass structure decorated with ceramic tiles in a Byzantine-Egyptian-Romanesque style.
After the Exposition the building was shipped to Fort de France and reassembled there, the work being completed by 1893. Known as the Schoelcher Library it contained the 10,000 books that Victor Schoelcher had donated to the island. Today, it houses over 250,000 books and an ethnographic museum, stands as a tribute to the man it is named after who led the movement to abolish slavery in Martinique. A "Negro village" where 400 people were displayed constituted the major attraction. Matching the opening day of the Exposition, the Opéra Comique premiered on 14 May 1889 with a work specially composed for that event: Jules Massenet's Esclarmonde and entertaining crowds of visitors for the more than 50 evenings the Exposition lasted. At the Exposition, the French composer Claude Debussy first heard Javanese gamelan music, performed by an ensemble from Java; this influenced some of his compositions. William Stroudley, locomotive superintendent of the London and South Coast Railway died whilst at the exhibition, where he was exhibiting one of his locomotives.
Heineken received the Grand Prix at the exposition. Buffalo Bill recruited American sharpshooter Annie Oakley to rejoin his "Wild West Show" which performed for packed audiences throughout the Exposition. Other prominent visitors included the Shah of Persia Nasereddin Shah, Prince of Wales and his wife, Princess Alexandra. S. journalist and diplomat Whitelaw Reid. A central attraction in the French section was the Imperial Diamond, at the time the largest diamond in the world; the Mexican pavi
New Orleans
New Orleans is a consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the southeastern region of the U. S. state of Louisiana. With an estimated population of 393,292 in 2017, it is the most populous city in Louisiana. A major port, New Orleans is considered an economic and commercial hub for the broader Gulf Coast region of the United States. New Orleans is world-renowned for its distinct music, Creole cuisine, unique dialect, its annual celebrations and festivals, most notably Mardi Gras; the historic heart of the city is the French Quarter, known for its French and Spanish Creole architecture and vibrant nightlife along Bourbon Street. The city has been described as the "most unique" in the United States, owing in large part to its cross-cultural and multilingual heritage. Founded in 1718 by French colonists, New Orleans was once the territorial capital of French Louisiana before being traded to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. New Orleans in 1840 was the third-most populous city in the United States, it was the largest city in the American South from the Antebellum era until after World War II.
The city's location and flat elevation have made it vulnerable to flooding. State and federal authorities have installed a complex system of levees and drainage pumps in an effort to protect the city. New Orleans was affected by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which resulted in flooding more than 80% of the city, thousands of deaths, so much displacement because of damaged communities and lost housing as to cause a population decline of over 50%. Since Katrina, major redevelopment efforts have led to a rebound in the city's population. Concerns about gentrification, new residents buying property in closely knit communities, displacement of longtime residents have been expressed; the city and Orleans Parish are coterminous. As of 2017, Orleans Parish is the third most-populous parish in Louisiana, behind East Baton Rouge Parish and neighboring Jefferson Parish; the city and parish are bounded by St. Tammany Parish and Lake Pontchartrain to the north, St. Bernard Parish and Lake Borgne to the east, Plaquemines Parish to the south, Jefferson Parish to the south and west.
The city anchors the larger New Orleans metropolitan area, which had an estimated population of 1,275,762 in 2017. It is the most populous metropolitan area in Louisiana and the 46th-most populated MSA in the United States; the city is named after the Duke of Orleans, who reigned as Regent for Louis XV from 1715 to 1723. It has many illustrative nicknames: Crescent City alludes to the course of the Lower Mississippi River around and through the city; the Big Easy was a reference by musicians in the early 20th century to the relative ease of finding work there. It may have originated in the Prohibition era, when the city was considered one big speakeasy due to the government's inability to control alcohol sales, in open violation of the 18th Amendment; the City that Care Forgot has been used since at least 1938, refers to the outwardly easy-going, carefree nature of the residents. La Nouvelle-Orléans was founded in the Spring of 1718 by the French Mississippi Company, under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, on land inhabited by the Chitimacha.
It was named for Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, Regent of the Kingdom of France at the time. His title came from the French city of Orléans; the French colony was ceded to the Spanish Empire in the Treaty of Paris, following France's defeat by Great Britain in the Seven Years' War. During the American Revolutionary War, New Orleans was an important port for smuggling aid to the rebels, transporting military equipment and supplies up the Mississippi River. Beginning in the 1760s, Filipinos began to settle around New Orleans. Bernardo de Gálvez y Madrid, Count of Gálvez launched a southern campaign against the British from the city in 1779. Nueva Orleans remained under Spanish control until 1803, when it reverted to French rule. Nearly all of the surviving 18th-century architecture of the Vieux Carré dates from the Spanish period, notably excepting the Old Ursuline Convent. Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Thereafter, the city grew with influxes of Americans, French and Africans.
Immigrants were Irish, Germans and Italians. Major commodity crops of sugar and cotton were cultivated with slave labor on nearby large plantations. Thousands of refugees from the 1804 Haitian Revolution, both whites and free people of color, arrived in New Orleans. While Governor Claiborne and other officials wanted to keep out additional free black people, the French Creoles wanted to increase the French-speaking population; as more refugees were allowed into the Territory of Orleans, Haitian émigrés who had first gone to Cuba arrived. Many of the white Francophones had been deported by officials in Cuba in retaliation for Bonapartist schemes. Nearly 90 percent of these immigrants settled in New Orleans; the 1809 migration brought 2,731 whites, 3,102 free people of color, 3,226 slaves of African descent, doubling the city's population. The city became a greater proportion than Charleston, South Carolina's 53 percent. During the final campaign of the War of 1812, the British sent a force of 11,000 in a
Panama–Pacific International Exposition
The Panama–Pacific International Exposition was a world's fair held in San Francisco, California, U. S. from February 20 to December 4, 1915. Its stated purpose was to celebrate the completion of the Panama Canal, but it was seen in the city as an opportunity to showcase its recovery from the 1906 earthquake; the fair was constructed on a 636 acre site along the northern shore, between the Presidio and Fort Mason, now known as the Marina District. Among the exhibits at the Exposition was the C. P. Huntington, the first steam locomotive purchased by Southern Pacific Railroad. A telephone line was established to New York City so people across the continent could hear the Pacific Ocean; the Liberty Bell traveled by train on a nationwide tour from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to attend the exposition. The 1915 American Grand Prize and Vanderbilt Cup auto races were held February 27 and March 6 on a 3.84-mile circuit set up around the Exposition grounds. The Smithsonian Institution had an exhibition at the Exposition.
Yumian, meaning fish-noodle in Chinese, is a noodle made with flour and fish from the Fu River in Yunmeng, China. Yunmeng Yumian was awarded silver medal of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition; the centerpiece was the Tower of Jewels, which rose to 435 feet and was covered with over 100,000 cut glass Novagems. The 3⁄4 to 2 inch colored "gems" sparkled in sunlight throughout the day and were illuminated by over 50 powerful electrical searchlights at night. In front of the Tower, the Fountain of Energy flowed at the center of the South Gardens, flanked by the Palace of Horticulture on the west and the Festival Hall to the east; the arch of the Tower served as the gateway to the Court of the Universe, leading to the Court of the Four Seasons to the west and the Court of Abundance to the east. These courts formed the primary exhibit area for the fair, which included the Food Products Palace, the Education and Social Economy Palace, the Agriculture Palace, the Liberal Arts Palace, the Transportation Palace, the Manufacturers Palace, the Mines and Metallurgy Palace, the Varied Industries Palace.
The Machinery Palace, the largest hall, dominated the east end of the central court. At the west end of central court group was the Palace of Fine Arts. Further west toward the bay down The Avenue of the Nations were national and states' buildings, displaying customs and products unique to the area represented. At the opposite end of the Fair, near Fort Mason was "The Zone", an avenue of popular amusements and concessions stands. Constructed from temporary materials all the fair's various buildings and attractions were pulled down in late 1915. Intended to fall into pieces at the close of the fair, the only surviving building on the Exposition grounds, Bernard Maybeck's Palace of Fine Arts, remained in place falling into disrepair; the Palace, including the colonnade with its signature weeping women and rotunda dome, was reconstructed in the 1960s and a seismic retrofit was completed in early 2009. The Exploratorium, an interactive science museum, occupied the northern 2/3 of the Palace from 1969 to 2013.
Buildings from the Exposition that still stand today include what is now called the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium at Civic Center Plaza and the Japanese Tea house, barged down the Bay to Belmont and operates as a restaurant. Surviving are the one-third scale steam locomotives of the Overfair Railroad that operated at the Exposition, they are maintained in working order at the Swanton Pacific Railroad Society located on Cal Poly San Luis Obispo's Swanton Ranch just north of Santa Cruz. The Legion of Honor Museum, in Lincoln Park, was the gift of Alma de Bretteville Spreckels, wife of the sugar magnate and thoroughbred racehorse owner/breeder Adolph B. Spreckels; the building is a full-scale replica of the French Pavilion from the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition, which in turn was a three-quarter-scale version of the Palais de la Légion d'Honneur known as the Hôtel de Salm in Paris by George Applegarth and H. Guillaume. At the close of the exposition, the French government granted Spreckels permission to construct a permanent replica of the French Pavilion, but World War I delayed the groundbreaking until 1921.
The US Post Office issued a set of four postage stamps to commemorate the exposition, with designs depicting a profile of Vasco Núñez de Balboa, the Pedro Miguel Locks of the Panama Canal, the Golden Gate, the discovery of San Francisco Bay. The stamps were first put on sale in 1913, to promote the coming event, perforated 12, reissued in 1914 and 1915, perforated 10, their prices today range widely. The United States Congress authorized the San Francisco Mint to issue a series of five commemorative coins. Said coins were four gold coins; the denominations of the gold coins were $1, $2 1⁄2 and $50. The Panama-Pacific coins have the distinction of being the first commemorative coins to bear the
President of the United States
The president of the United States is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces. In contemporary times, the president is looked upon as one of the world's most powerful political figures as the leader of the only remaining global superpower; the role includes responsibility for the world's most expensive military, which has the second largest nuclear arsenal. The president leads the nation with the largest economy by nominal GDP; the president possesses international hard and soft power. Article II of the Constitution establishes the executive branch of the federal government, it vests the executive power of the United States in the president. The power includes the execution and enforcement of federal law, alongside the responsibility of appointing federal executive, diplomatic and judicial officers, concluding treaties with foreign powers with the advice and consent of the Senate.
The president is further empowered to grant federal pardons and reprieves, to convene and adjourn either or both houses of Congress under extraordinary circumstances. The president directs the foreign and domestic policies of the United States, takes an active role in promoting his policy priorities to members of Congress. In addition, as part of the system of checks and balances, Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution gives the president the power to sign or veto federal legislation; the power of the presidency has grown since its formation, as has the power of the federal government as a whole. Through the Electoral College, registered voters indirectly elect the president and vice president to a four-year term; this is the only federal election in the United States, not decided by popular vote. Nine vice presidents became president by virtue of a president's intra-term resignation. Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 sets three qualifications for holding the presidency: natural-born U. S. citizenship.
The Twenty-second Amendment precludes any person from being elected president to a third term. In all, 44 individuals have served 45 presidencies spanning 57 full four-year terms. Grover Cleveland served two non-consecutive terms, so he is counted twice, as both the 22nd and 24th president. Donald Trump of New York is the current president of the United States, he assumed office on January 20, 2017. In July 1776, during the American Revolutionary War, the Thirteen Colonies, acting jointly through the Second Continental Congress, declared themselves to be 13 independent sovereign states, no longer under British rule. Recognizing the necessity of coordinating their efforts against the British, the Continental Congress began the process of drafting a constitution that would bind the states together. There were long debates on a number of issues, including representation and voting, the exact powers to be given the central government. Congress finished work on the Articles of Confederation to establish a perpetual union between the states in November 1777 and sent it to the states for ratification.
Under the Articles, which took effect on March 1, 1781, the Congress of the Confederation was a central political authority without any legislative power. It could make its own resolutions and regulations, but not any laws, could not impose any taxes or enforce local commercial regulations upon its citizens; this institutional design reflected how Americans believed the deposed British system of Crown and Parliament ought to have functioned with respect to the royal dominion: a superintending body for matters that concerned the entire empire. The states were out from under any monarchy and assigned some royal prerogatives to Congress; the members of Congress elected a President of the United States in Congress Assembled to preside over its deliberation as a neutral discussion moderator. Unrelated to and quite dissimilar from the office of President of the United States, it was a ceremonial position without much influence. In 1783, the Treaty of Paris secured independence for each of the former colonies.
With peace at hand, the states each turned toward their own internal affairs. By 1786, Americans found their continental borders besieged and weak and their respective economies in crises as neighboring states agitated trade rivalries with one another, they witnessed their hard currency pouring into foreign markets to pay for imports, their Mediterranean commerce preyed upon by North African pirates, their foreign-financed Revolutionary War debts unpaid and accruing interest. Civil and political unrest loomed. Following the successful resolution of commercial and fishing disputes between Virginia and Maryland at the Mount Vernon Conference in 1785, Virginia called for a trade conference between all the states, set for September 1786 in Annapolis, with an aim toward resolving further-reaching interstate commercial antagonisms; when the convention failed for lack of attendance due to suspicions among most of the other states, Alexander Hamilton led the Annapolis delegates in a call for a convention to offer revisions to the Articles, to be held the next spring in Philadelphia.
Prospects for the next convention appeared bleak until James Madison and Edmund Randolph succeeded in securing George Washington's attendance to Philadelphia as a delegate for Virginia. When the Constitutional Convention convened in May 1787, the 12 state delegations in attendance (Rh
World's Columbian Exposition
The World's Columbian Exposition was a world's fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. The centerpiece of the Fair, the large water pool, represented the long voyage Columbus took to the New World. Chicago bested New York City, Washington, D. C. and St. Louis for the honor of hosting the fair; the Exposition was an influential social and cultural event and had a profound effect on architecture, the arts, Chicago's self-image, American industrial optimism. The layout of the Chicago Columbian Exposition was, in large part, designed by John Wellborn Root, Daniel Burnham, Frederick Law Olmsted and Charles B. Atwood, it was the prototype of what his colleagues thought a city should be. It was designed to follow Beaux Arts principles of design, namely French neoclassical architecture principles based on symmetry and splendor; the color of the material used to cover the buildings façades gave the fairgrounds its nickname, the White City.
Many prominent architects designed its 14 "great buildings". Artists and musicians were featured in exhibits and many made depictions and works of art inspired by the exposition; the exposition covered 690 acres, featuring nearly 200 new buildings of predominantly neoclassical architecture and lagoons, people and cultures from 46 countries. More than 27 million people attended the exposition during its six-month run, its scale and grandeur far exceeded the other world's fairs, it became a symbol of the emerging American Exceptionalism, much in the same way that the Great Exhibition became a symbol of the Victorian era United Kingdom. Dedication ceremonies for the fair were held on October 21, 1892, but the fairgrounds were not opened to the public until May 1, 1893; the fair continued until October 30, 1893. In addition to recognizing the 400th anniversary of the discovery of the New World by Europeans, the fair served to show the world that Chicago had risen from the ashes of the Great Chicago Fire, which had destroyed much of the city in 1871.
On October 9, 1893, the day designated as Chicago Day, the fair set a world record for outdoor event attendance, drawing 751,026 people. The debt for the fair was soon paid off with a check for $1.5 million. Chicago has commemorated the fair with one of the stars on its municipal flag. Many prominent civic and commercial leaders from around the United States participated in the financing and management of the Fair, including Chicago shoe company owner Charles H. Schwab, Chicago railroad and manufacturing magnate John Whitfield Bunn, Connecticut banking and iron products magnate Milo Barnum Richardson, among many others; the fair was planned in the early 1890s during the Gilded Age of rapid industrial growth and class tension. World's fairs, such as London's 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition, had been successful in Europe as a way to bring together societies fragmented along class lines; the first American attempt at a world's fair in Philadelphia in 1876, drew crowds but was a financial failure.
Nonetheless, ideas about distinguishing the 400th anniversary of Columbus' landing started in the late 1880s. Civic leaders in St. Louis, New York City, Washington DC and Chicago expressed an interest in hosting a fair to generate profits, boost real estate values, promote their cities. Congress was called on to decide the location. New York's financiers J. P. Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, William Waldorf Astor, among others, pledged $15 million to finance the fair if Congress awarded it to New York, while Chicagoans Charles T. Yerkes, Marshall Field, Philip Armour, Gustavus Swift, Cyrus McCormick, offered to finance a Chicago fair. What persuaded Congress was Chicago banker Lyman Gage, who raised several million additional dollars in a 24-hour period and above New York's final offer. Chicago representatives not only fought for the world's fair on monetary reasons, but on practicality reasons. On a Senate hearing held in January 1890, representative Thomas B. Bryan argued that the most important qualities for a world's fair were'abundant supplies of good air and pure water... ample space and transportation for all exhibits and visitors...
" He argued that New York had too many obstructions, Chicago would be able to use large amounts of land around the city where there was "not a house to buy and not a rock to blast.." and that it would be so located that "the artisan and the farmer and the shopkeeper and the man of humble means" would be able to access the fair. Bryan continued to say that the fair was of'vital interest' to the West, that the West wanted the location to be Chicago; the city spokesmen would continue to stress the essentials of a successful Exposition and that only Chicago was fitted to fill these exposition requirements. The exposition corporation and national exposition commission settled on Jackson Park and an area around it as the fair site. Daniel H. Burnham was selected as director of works, George R. Davis as director-general. Burnham emphasized architecture and sculpture as central to the fair and assembled the period's top talent to design the buildings and grounds including Frederick Law Olmsted for the grounds.
The temporary buildings were designed in an ornate Neoclassical style and painted white, resulting in the fair site being referred to as the "White City". The Exposition's offices set up shop in the upper floors of the Rand McNally Building on Adams Street, the world's first all-steel-fram
Audubon Park (New Orleans)
Audubon Park is a city park located in the Uptown neighborhood of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the United States. It is 350 acres; the park is six miles to the west of the city center of New Orleans and sits on land, purchased by the city in 1871. It is bordered on one side by the Mississippi River and on the other by St. Charles Avenue, directly across from Tulane University and Loyola University; the park is named in honor of artist and naturalist John James Audubon, who began living in New Orleans in 1821. The land now housing the park was a plantation in the early statehood days, it was used by both the Confederate and the Union armies in the American Civil War, as a staging area for the Buffalo Soldiers. At the time of its establishment it was the last large undeveloped parcel of what was to become uptown New Orleans; the area was annexed by the City of New Orleans, along with the surrounding communities of Jefferson City and Greenville in 1870, the following year the city purchased the land.
Use as an urban park was intended from the start, with "Upper City Park" selected as a name to distinguish the park from City Park, but few improvements occurred in the first decade. The nascent park accommodated a World's Fair soon thereafter, the World Cotton Centennial of 1884. After the closing of the fair, the park's development began in earnest. Most of the fair's buildings were demolished, with the exception of Horticultural Hall - which remained in the park until destroyed in the 1915 New Orleans hurricane; the only notable reminder of the fair to remain in the park in the 21st century is a large iron ore rock from the Alabama State exhibit. Audubon Park's present form follows a design drafted by John Charles Olmsted, a principal of the renowned Olmsted Brothers landscape architecture practice. Early in the 20th century, part of the park became home to the Audubon Zoo; the zoo received significant improvement at the hands of the Works Progress Administration, again from the 1970s onwards.
Numerous early- and mid-20th century park attractions like the miniature railway, the enormous Whitney Young public swimming pool, the swan boats in the lagoons, the carousel were closed, dismantled and/or discontinued in the 1970s, though a far smaller public pool was constructed in the 1990s adjacent to the site of the original Young pool. The park features sports fields and picnic facilities along the Mississippi River, in an area called Riverview Park; this riverside portion of Audubon Park is known colloquially as "The Fly", an almost-forgotten reference to the modernist, butterfly-shaped river viewing shelter constructed in the 1960s and demolished in the 1980s in the aftermath of its severe damage one foggy morning at the hands of blundering river traffic. The ring road around the park was closed to automobile traffic at the start of the 1980s and became a popular 1.7-mile walking and biking route. A 2.2 mile dirt path located around the perimeter of the park is popular for runners seeking a less congested route.
A few of the park's old live oak trees were blown down when Hurricane Katrina hit the city in 2005, but as the park is wholly located on high ground comprising the Mississippi River's natural levee, it was spared the flooding experienced by the majority of the city after Katrina. Audubon Park was used as a makeshift helicopter port and encampment for National Guard troops and relief workers after the storm. In 1898 the Audubon golf course opened within the park. In 2002, the golf course was renovated and converted to a Par 3 executive course, to complaints from many non-golfing users of the park, who alleged that the original Olmsted Brothers design was being desecrated; the Heymann Memorial Conservatory, closed for many years prior, was demolished to accommodate the golf course renovation and new golf clubhouse. In 2002, the New Orleans city council renamed the park's "Avenger Field" to "David Berger - Avenger Field" in memory of David Mark Berger, an athlete and graduate of Tulane University, captured and killed in the 1972 Olympic Games hostage crisis.
The field was dedicated to Berger's memory on June 10, 2013. Ochsner Island on the east side of the park features a rookery, one of the prime birding spots in Greater New Orleans; the island attracts hundreds of wading birds, including great egrets, cattle egrets, snowy egrets, little blue herons, green herons, night herons and others. The park is home to diving double-crested cormorants and anhingas, as well as to many species of ducks. Black-bellied whistling ducks have begun using the park's lagoons as a stopover on their migrations. Audubon Park Fodor's Online Travel Guide Vintage Audubon Park post cards Images of the Live Oaks in Audubon Park
Telegraphy
Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of textual or symbolic messages without the physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus semaphore is a method of telegraphy. Telegraphy requires that the method used for encoding the message be known to both sender and receiver. Many methods are designed according to the limits of the signalling medium used; the use of smoke signals, reflected light signals, flag semaphore signals are early examples. In the 19th century, the harnessing of electricity led to the invention of electrical telegraphy; the advent of radio in the early 20th century brought about radiotelegraphy and other forms of wireless telegraphy. In the Internet age, telegraphic means developed in sophistication and ease of use, with natural language interfaces that hide the underlying code, allowing such technologies as electronic mail and instant messaging; the word "telegraph" was first coined by the French inventor of the Semaphore telegraph, Claude Chappe, who coined the word "semaphore".
A "telegraph" is a device for transmitting and receiving messages over long distances, i.e. for telegraphy. The word "telegraph" alone now refers to an electrical telegraph. Wireless telegraphy, transmission of messages over radio with telegraphic codes. Contrary to the extensive definition used by Chappe, Morse argued that the term telegraph can be applied only to systems that transmit and record messages at a distance; this is to be distinguished from semaphore, which transmits messages. Smoke signals, for instance, are to be considered semaphore, not telegraph. According to Morse, telegraph dates only from 1832 when Pavel Schilling invented one of the earliest electrical telegraphs. A telegraph message sent by an electrical telegraph operator or telegrapher using Morse code was known as a telegram. A cablegram was a message sent by a submarine telegraph cable shortened to a cable or a wire. A Telex was a message sent by a Telex network, a switched network of teleprinters similar to a telephone network.
A wire picture or wire photo was a newspaper picture, sent from a remote location by a facsimile telegraph. A diplomatic telegram known as a diplomatic cable, is the term given to a confidential communication between a diplomatic mission and the foreign ministry of its parent country; these continue to be called cables regardless of the method used for transmission. Passing messages by signalling over distance is an ancient practice. One of the oldest examples is the signal towers of the Great Wall of China. In 400 BC, signals could drum beats. By 200 BC complex flag signalling had developed, by the Han dynasty signallers had a choice of lights, flags, or gunshots to send signals. By the Tang dynasty a message could be sent 700 miles in 24 hours; the Ming dynasty added artillery to the possible signals. While the signalling was complex, only predetermined messages could be sent; the Chinese signalling system extended well beyond the Great Wall. Signal towers away from the wall were used to give early warning of an attack.
Others were built further out as part of the protection of trade routes the Silk Road. Signal fires were used in Europe and elsewhere for military purposes; the Roman army made frequent use of them, as did their enemies, the remains of some of the stations still exist. Few details have been recorded of European/Mediterranean signalling systems and the possible messages. One of the few for which details are known is a system invented by Aeneas Tacticus. Tacitus's system had water filled pots at the two signal stations which were drained in synchronisation. Annotation on a floating scale indicated which message was being received. Signals sent by means of torches indicated when to start and stop draining to keep the synchronisation. None of the signalling systems discussed above are true telegraphs in the sense of a system that can transmit arbitrary messages over arbitrary distances. Lines of signalling relay stations can send messages to any required distance, but all these systems are limited to one extent or another in the range of messages that they can send.
A system like flag semaphore, with an alphabetic code, can send any given message, but the system is designed for short-range communication between two persons. An engine order telegraph, used to send instructions from the bridge of a ship to the engine room, fails to meet both criteria. There was only one ancient signalling system described; that was a system using the Polybius square to encode an alphabet. Polybius suggested using two successive groups of torches to identify the coordinates of the letter of the alphabet being transmitted; the number of said torches held up signalled the grid square. The system would have been slow for military purposes and there is no record of it being used. An optical telegraph, or semaphore telegraph is a telegraph consisting of a line of stations in towers or natural high points which signal to each other by means of shutters or paddles. Early proposals for an optical telegraph system were made to the Royal Society by Robert Hooke in 1684 and were first implemented on an experimental level by Sir Richard Lovell Edgeworth in 1767.
The first successful optical telegraph network was invented by Claude Chappe and operated in France from 1
