The best telegraph known before the use of electricity, was invented by
two schoolboys in France. They were brothers named Chappé (shap-pay).
They were in different boarding schools some miles apart, and the rules
of their schools did not allow them to write letters to each other. But
the two schools were in sight of each other. The brothers invented a
telegraph. They put up poles with bars of wood on them. These bars
would turn on pegs or pins. The bars were turned up or down, or one up
and another down, or two down and one up, and so on. Every movement of
the bars meant a letter. In this way the two brothers talked to each
other, though they were miles apart. When the boys became men, they
sold their plan to the French Government. The money they got made their
fortune.
[Illustration: A Mail Carrier.]
About the time they were selling this plan to the French Government, a
boy named Samuel Morse was born in this country. Fifty years later this
Samuel Morse set up the first Morse electric telegraph, which is the
one we now use.
In the old days before telegraph wires were strung all over the
country, it took weeks to carry news to places far away. There were no
railroads, and the mails had to travel slowly. A boy on a horse trotted
along the road to carry the mail bags to country places. From one large
city to another, the mails were carried by stagecoaches.
When the people had voted for President, it was weeks before the news
of the election could be gathered in. Then it took other weeks to let
the people in distant villages know the name of the new President.
Nowadays a great event is known in almost every part of the country on
the very day it happens.