Solresol
Jean François Sudre (1787-1864) invented a means of long-distance communcation in 1817, which he named Solresol. This language is based on the musical scale and has just seven syllables: do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si. Statistically, these combinations yield seven one-syllable words, 49 of two syllables, 336 of three, 2,268 of four, 9,072 of five, for a total of 11,732 primary words, a respectable vocabulary in any language. Shifts of stress from one syllable to another yielded additional words and separate grammatical forms. The language could be sung, played, or hummed, as well as spoken. It could be written as music. It could be expressed in taps, or even colors. Solresol gained wide acceptance, and was sponsored by such figures as Victor Hugo, Lamartine, von Humboldt, and Napoleon III.
Here's an example:
rml rdd lsorf ldld = Donnez un mètre de mousseline.
It had particular value to the military in this period, as it could be broadcast over long distances by a loud-enough military band. Some of you may have heard a snatch or two of Solresol - it was used in the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind as the language that the alien spacecraft uses to communicate.
If Sudre had pioneered his language only a few years earlier, it would have been available to Napoleon. He could have established broadcast centers all over the continent relatively quickly.
