If Napoleon didn't use the optical telegraph, would the Internet still be invented?

People often make fun of Al Gore for claiming to have invented the Internet, even though they were twisting his words and he was largely responsible for the Internet taking off by tirelessly promoting it.

I think you could go back even further and argue that Napoleon's optical telegraph system is the direct ancestor of today's Internet. After all it led to the electromagnetic telegraph and Morse Code, which ultimately led to TCP/IP, packet switching and the World Wide Web!

Would telegraphy have failed to catch on, or wouldn't have caught on until later if Napoleon didn't use optical telegraphy to promote his conquests? Would the Internet have developed much later or not at all if it weren't for Napoleon?
 
I should note Chappe, not Napoleon invented the semaphore but Napoleon used it extensively for his conquests and built at least one major line.
 
Butterflies would lead to the internet perhaps not being named internet and being invented earlier/later, but I don't think such a detail would slow down substiantially the development of modern technology.

Maybe Napoleon doesn't use the optical telegraph, leading to the death of some important person for whatever reason, this in turn leading to Napoleon achieving a victory in Europe and, eventually, French is the dominant power in 20th century's world and name the "Internet" "Le réseau".
 
Don't think that any delay by Nappy not using Telegraphs (not bothering counting butterflies which would probably stop his empire dead a fair bit earlier), would in any way delay the invention of the recursors to the Internet.
 
It of course will change the history of the Internet, but without other things occurring there wouldn't be any dramatic change.
 
It of course will change the history of the Internet, but without other things occurring there wouldn't be any dramatic change.

I'm not sure because the Napoleonic Wars are what prompted Britain to build their first working telegraph systems. If Britain didn't have that initial wave of interest, I don't think Morse would have invented the electrical telegraph.

I think the butterfly effect would be huge. Without a telegraph, or with a much later telegraph, colonization of the world and Manifest Destiny in the United States wouldn't have been nearly as effective as they were. Ideologies like communism would have propagated much more slowly, and R&D wouldn't develop as quickly if scientists and inventors had to correspond solely by snail mail.
 
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