Can the electric telegraph be invented before artillery/firearms?

[BlondieBC]

Exactly. Someone upthread wondered how you could possibly do Chinese on a telegraph, given the thousands of characters.

Certainly the tech is a problem. Even IF we had batteries, you're going to need LOTS of them, and they won't be cheap (they can't recharge them, so they'll have to resmelt the metal electrodes as they get used up). Plus the copper wire, which would be hugely expensive.

The Optical Telegraph (which the French spent a LOT of money on) is a lot more doable. Yes, it only works in good weather, but it's a lot better than nothing, and faster than horses.

As of 2002, the USA still had one iron phone line in use. This is iron, not steel. It does not conduct as well, but if cost is an issue, it is a more likely material.

As to the message, I would guess they would use binary base number and limit the words used to 1024 or 2048 of the more common words. Seem like one is functionally literate in modern Chinese at these levels. It may be a bit higher.

Agreed that optical telegraph is more likely, and for some uses such as communication between major cities, could actually be cost effective for high value messages. If it is not critical military messages, a telegraph that works most days is still useful.

 

[BlondieBC]

It'd probably be the Romans building it: the investment cost of the copper would be enormous; you'd need a large empire to get any use out of it; and you'd literally have to crucify thieves from the telegraph poles to prevent wholesale theft.

Both the Romans and Chinese would be ok with painful execution of thieves or even group punishment of nearby villages.

 

[Somes J]

Maybe instead of having an early telegraph have a delayed invention of gunpowder?

How long would it be plausible to delay the invention of gunpowder? Could it be plausibly delayed until the industrial revolution and the beginning of modern science?

 

[carlton_bach]

Both the Romans and Chinese would be ok with painful execution of thieves or even group punishment of nearby villages.

Both the Romans and the Chinese would nonetheless have to address the problems that putting an endemically corrupt administration in charge of such a system would bring. People can get away with a remarkable array of things if they are protected by patrons in high places.

 

[hairysamarian]

Both the Romans and the Chinese would nonetheless have to address the problems that putting an endemically corrupt administration in charge of such a system would bring. People can get away with a remarkable array of things if they are protected by patrons in high places.

Corruption is going to be a factor no matter who you have inventing the system and no matter who you have running it. Has there ever been a bureaucracy without it?

With two guys in a cave you get community, with three you get politics. As soon as one of those three thinks the other two aren't looking, you get corruption.

 

[pieman3141]

Conceivably, yes. However, I think gunpowder lead to the idea of fuel sources, not just for light or heat, but actual work. Steam was toyed with, of course, but was never applied until after gunpowder advancements were well underway. The Baghdad Battery was also a toy, even though it demonstrated some sort of electrical usage.

 

[Johnrankins]

Conceivably, yes. However, I think gunpowder lead to the idea of fuel sources, not just for light or heat, but actual work. Steam was toyed with, of course, but was never applied until after gunpowder advancements were well underway. The Baghdad Battery was also a toy, even though it demonstrated some sort of electrical usage.

Yeah, it was pretty low power. In any case even modern batteries won't get you telegraphs, you need power generators for that as sending signals long distances through wires takes a lot of power.

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

Yeah, it was pretty low power. In any case even modern batteries won't get you telegraphs, you need power generators for that as sending signals long distances through wires takes a lot of power.

Well... Perhaps depending on the definition of "long distances", but the first telegraphs used batteries.

In fact, as late as the early '60s, Grandad's farm had telephone and not electricity. Certainly the local exchange had electricity, but the phone at the farm used dry cells, IIRC, to power the signal going out. I don't THINK they had to crank by hand like you see in the movies. (I was like 5 or 6 or something when they got electricity.)

It's pretty amazing what you can do with batteries.
Of course it helps if you have really good copper for low-resistance conduction.

 

[Johnrankins]

Well... Perhaps depending on the definition of "long distances", but the first telegraphs used batteries.

In fact, as late as the early '60s, Grandad's farm had telephone and not electricity. Certainly the local exchange had electricity, but the phone at the farm used dry cells, IIRC, to power the signal going out. I don't THINK they had to crank by hand like you see in the movies. (I was like 5 or 6 or something when they got electricity.)

It's pretty amazing what you can do with batteries.
Of course it helps if you have really good copper for low-resistance conduction.

It wasn't the batteries on his phone that made the call but in the phone lines themselves. The entire phone system is an electrical system on its own.

 

[BlondieBC]

It wasn't the batteries on his phone that made the call but in the phone lines themselves. The entire phone system is an electrical system on its own.

This is correct. When the phone system was setup, the electric grid was not as reliable as the phone company wanted, even in New York City, so the phone company decided to setup a parallel electric grid.

 

[BlondieBC]

Yeah, it was pretty low power. In any case even modern batteries won't get you telegraphs, you need power generators for that as sending signals long distances through wires takes a lot of power.

Often technology starts in a small, high value niche market, then expands to general use. So just for an example, the Emperor wants all this guard post to be able to talk to the command post in his palace area which is a few square miles of land. Being such a short distance the batteries are sufficient, and security (theft) is not a problem. After a decade or so of successful usage in the main palace, the system is used in the largest, most important command posts. A few decades after that, the emperor links a few major cities. This allows the gradual evolution of the technology without having to solve the problem of how to do 500 miles of telegraph line in one day.

The poster only ask for it to develop before gun powder, so if the emperor has the system install, say 100 years before gun powder, it meets the requirement, even if it is say 1200 before the telegraph runs the entire length of the great wall. Think about how long it was between the first use of gunpowder, and the common use of the musket.

 

[Montanian]

Compelling use for a telegraph system is as other posters have referred to, probably the driving factor for resolving the technical challenges and keeping a network up.

An empire with a road system with periodic messenger stations/posts has much of the hard part already done and staffed as that gives you meaningful routes since roads connect communities and military posts while staffing for telegraphers who weren't many miles apart in the days of batter-based telegraphy (I'm thinking in the Western United States and railroad-tied telegraphy.)

Compelling use for Rome or China would be border security (cheaper than building the Great Wall or Hadrian's Wall!) including from ports (piracy, storms, etc.) as well as internal uprisings and bandits. The cost of developing and implementing communications technology is vastly cheaper than sustaining military units, let alone forts, forward bases, long range patrols, and when we think about the copper consumption, compare that to the amount of bronze and iron used in equipping a maniple, century, legion, etc...

But you really see these networks expand for sharing weather reporting, commercial trade information-boy would the economies boom with better knowledge of prices, supply, and demand, and easier central power administration both at the national and regional/provincial levels.

Often the greatest technology jumps come from the navy/maritime trades so maybe this goes from flags and torches to heliograph to telegraphy as a natural (and historic) progression of more robust and detailed communications.

For that matter spark-gap radio bypasses the wiring infrastructure (and becomes useful for ships and mobile military units) so maybe that would be the technology jump (technology progressions only look logical in retrospect and often by ignoring many of the false starts, early pioneers, and non-local efforts.)

 

[Mad Bad Rabbit]

A third candidate that occurs to me: the Inca empire. Would they use /gold/ instead of copper for the wire?

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

A third candidate that occurs to me: the Inca empire. Would they use /gold/ instead of copper for the wire?

No. 1) they had more copper than gold
2) copper is a far better conductor

The only advantages of gold are that it is more ductile (which is, admittedly, and advantage if you're trying to draw miles of wire) and that it doesn't corrode.

 

[kellineil]

I find a significantly earlier development of electric telegraph very unlikely. Without a reasonably advanced theoretical understanding of electricity it isn't really possible and electricity as a concept is really rather esoteric and would appear as magic to those without a scientific world view. Indeed even today in the west most people do not understand it and if you asked a person at random to explain how electrical systems work you would get the impression that the person was talking about something magical, or 'beyond our ken'

It is notable that knowledge of electricity only started to be developed when proto-scientists began to look into the specific cause of certain natural phenomena. It took about 200 years to go from this stage to the telegraph and I'm not sure it could be mmuch quicker

Gunpowder however is eminantly understandable, it is just a mixture of chemicals that burn more efficiently together than apart. Stick them in a tube and light them and you can propel a missile at the enemy. This is quite easily understood and replicated than an electric current.

If what you're looking for is a reliable system of long distance communications that can encode reasonable complex messages then what about semaphore towers or even something akin to the clacks from the discworld? They may be complex but they would be reproducable in Europe as early as the 10th Century