GONON, ENNEMOND. - THE FRENCH OPTICAL TELERAPH.

Des Télégraphes Aériens et électriques. Questions mises a la portée de tout le Monde.

Paris, A. Sirou, 1845. Nice contemp. full embossed cloth. Gilt spine. Stamps on title-page. A paperlabel pasted on upper part of spine. Lithographed frontispiece with handcolouring. (6),107 pp. Internally clean and fine, printed on good paper (papier vélin).

First edition describing the French optical telegraph system, the mechanical and optical telegraph system developed by Ennemond Gonon. This system was described by Gonon as a new telegraph for day and night, universal and perpetual, and for all languages. Mechanical-optical telegraphy had been invented by French engineer Claude Chappe in the 1790s. Gonon's system was intended to improve on Chappe's, but the rise of the electric telegraph developed by Morse in the 1840s, meant Gonon's system was never built.

Order-nr.: 52193