alternatehistory.com

Many works of time travel alternate history, such as Lest Darkness Fall and the Belisarius series, involve the protagonist introducing some form of optical telegraphy to the Romans or other such civilization in Antiquity. Since heliographs and semaphores are, for all intents and purposes, fairly simple, I've always wondered why there was no major development along such lines in the time period.

The closest that they seem to have had is the hydraulic telegraph developed by the Greeks. However, other than this device of limited use (you had to know what messages you wanted to send before you even built it, and you couldn't send any other messages), there wasn't much else out there. Unless, of course, you consider lighthouses to be a form of optical telegraphy.

So, the question I posit is not "How might the Greeks and Romans have fared if they had a proper optical telegraphy system?", seing as the answer's pretty simple: They would have done better.

My question is what reasons were there for not having developed such a system?
Top