Chapter 274: The Chapel Telegram.
Chapter 274 – Chap “Telegram”
“Mr. Burns, Betty, I need you to refine such a workable plan for me.”
In the lord’s office, Paul spoke eloquently to a picture hanging on the wall. Also sitting in the room were Guy Burns, Betty Diaz, Laddie Sertia and a host of others.
The picture on the wall was of a stone tower, shaped like a guard tower, but strangely enough there was a strange device standing on top of the tower.
It was a wooden frame with two bent “arms” sticking out of it.
Guy Burns asked with great interest, “What is this new invention of yours?”
“Oh! It is a marvelous thing, or rather a marvelous system.”
“I call him the – [Emergency Reporting Station], or the [Rocker Signal System], for transmitting urgent messages.”
“Earl-sama, if I’m not mistaken, you’re using the two [arms] on that wooden frame to pose in different shapes, and by doing so, you’re transmitting different messages.”
“Aha! Burns, you are truly my confidant! That’s right, this invention was inspired by beacons, but as you know, the amount of information that beacons can convey is just too limited, so I thought of semaphore, and after slightly improving it, it became this. You see, each shape represents a letter or a number, and then combining them makes a complete sentence or a full paragraph.”
Paul introduced his “invention” without a blush, “We built these emergency stations at regular intervals and called them [base stations], on which specialized personnel were stationed to wait to receive signals from the other emergency wars. Starting from the first station, the information will be passed on like a baton until it reaches the final station.”
“If it was in the past, it was a bit impractical to build such a system because of the limited vision of the human eye, but with the telescope it’s completely feasible, and we only need to set up a very small number of emergency reporting stations to cause the transmission of information over a very long distance.”
Burns sighed, “This is a marvelous invention.”
Was this invented by Paul? Of course not, the real inventor of this [optical telegraph] was the Frenchman Claude Chappe.
In 1791 in northern France, Claude Chapoux and his brother designed a “telegraph” system for transmitting information optically over long distances. They succeeded in sending a message 16 kilometers away in four minutes, which was much faster than the stagecoaches and ships of the time.
It was an entirely manual system, with signalmen stationed inside who manipulated the indicator arms according to specific rules; every time the tower’s indicator arm took a shape, a signal was sent, and the different signaling stations played solitaire, and the message was delivered.
Compared with the real telegraph, the efficiency of message transmission is very “touching”, a skilled operator can output up to three signals per minute. According to statistics, at that time, a complete message consists of 36 signals on average, which means that even if the system uses the best operators, the system can only deliver 0.083 messages a minute. If it was raining or windy or the operator was in a bad mood, whether the message could be sent or not was still a matter of fate.
However, the efficiency of this signaling system is also good enough to beat the human transmission of the same generation.
It developed into an industry, serving government enterprises in peacetime, and by 1840 France had built a 5,000-kilometer communications network with 356 base stations, and Europe had built thousands of these “telegraph” towers, which could be considered the first information highway.
In Alexandre Dumas’s novel The Count of Monte Cristo, Mr. Count is able to make Danglars lose money in speculation by bribing the telegraph operator to send out wrong information, and then take out all the money that he had deposited in the Danglars’ bank, which he could not afford to pay, and eventually went bankrupt.
Paul is very lucky that the language system of this world is similar to the alphabet like Latin, if it is like cuneiform, it is really going to catch a rush. “Burns, I need you to set up an operating device that will allow the transmitter to conveniently swing the swing arm into different shapes.”
Burns stood up and bowed to Paul, “I am honored to be a part of your great invention.”
“Haha, it’s our great invention.”
Paul corrected him with a smile, then he turned to Betty, the head of education, “As for you, master linguist, I need you to devise a coding system – what shapes represent what what letters or numbers. Laddie, you are also a knowledgeable scholar and I hope you can assist from the sidelines.”
Lardy nodded and responded, “Yes, Lord Gladman!”
Betty, on the other hand, pursed her lips and didn’t say a word, and with her looks, this was a different look now.
Her reaction made Paul wonder, he didn’t seem to have offended her much lately.
Business is important, Paul continued to command: “There are some very important aspects, such as how to determine the beginning and end of a piece of information, how to verify the integrity of a piece of information. Another thing is [congestion control], to make an analogy, when carriages come from different directions on an intersection, how should they all be allowed to pass smoothly.”
“The other thing is that we call ordinary encoding [plaintext], which can be used to transmit some insensitive information that doesn’t involve secrets, but sensitive information should be encoded, or encrypted, twice on top of the plaintext. I don’t want the enemy’s spies to have to do nothing, and to be able to figure out what kind of classified information we’re transmitting by squatting near our base stations every day. “
Seeing that Ms. Supervisor still didn’t respond, Paul said suspiciously:
“Uh …… I say Betty, Burns is mainly responsible for the design of the operating device, and his focus is still on the development of the new spinning machine, so the overall construction of the system I would like to put you in charge. How long do you think it would take to build a line from Lake Frankland Harbor to Lakewood and then to Butua?”
Betty, or rather Erin, finally moved her eyebrows and answered after a little thought, “It requires experimentation, Earl-sama, to first determine the optimal distance between two [base stations] through experimentation, and then determine the quantity, choose the route, and estimate the cost …… In addition to that, it also includes the training of the personnel, which will also take consume time.”
“I’ll immediately greet Chief Steward Ford and make the construction of the emergency reporting station system the first priority of expenditure!”
After the Salt People’s riot happened a few days ago, Paul felt that the current news dissemination speed was too sluggish. Once the rocker signaling system was completed, Lakeheart Town would be able to sense the winds of what was happening in the territory in a relatively timely manner, and the orders sent out by the lord’s house could be swiftly sent down to the localities.
The means of transmitting information was related to whether a regime could effectively control the territory under its rule.
“I desperately hope that the entire system running through Arda, Baildin, and the northern part of Emden can be built within half a year.”
Erin raised an eyebrow and said, “I will work towards that end, but Earl-sama, the prerequisite is that the affairs officers of the Council of State won’t treat me, the female head of the Council, as if I’m nothing, if everyone treats me as if I’m air, things won’t get done.”
Ha! Paul knew why this education director was having a tantrum, it was because she was not notified of the emergency meeting held after the riot.
(End of chapter)