British Hydraulic Semaphore System
The British civil engineer Francis Whishaw, who latter become a principal in the General Telegraph Company, publicized a hydraulic telegraph in 1838 but was unable to deploy it commercially. By applying pressure at a transmitter device connected to a water-filled pipe which travelled all the way to a similar receiver device, he was able to effect a change in the water level which would then indicate coded information to the receiver's operator.
The system was estimated to cost £200 per mile (1.6 km) and could convey a vocabulary of 12,000 words. The U.K.'s Mechanics Magazine in March 1838 described it as follows:
| “ | ...a column of water be conveniently employed to transmit information. Mr Francis Whishaw has conveyed a column of water through sixty yards of pipe in the most convoluted form, and the two ends of the column being on a level, motion is no sooner given to one end than it is communicated through the whole sixty yards to the other end of the column. No perceptible interval elapses between the time of impressing motion on one end of the column and of communicating it to the other.
To each end of a column he attaches a float board with an index, and the depression of any given number of figures on one index, will be immediately followed by a corresponding rise of the float board and index at the other end. It is supposed that this simple longitudinal motion can be made to convey all kinds of information. It appears to us that the amount of information which can be conveyed by the motion in one direction only, of the water, or backward and forwards, must be limited. To make the mere motion backwards and forwards of a float board, indicated on a graduated index, convey a great number of words or letters, is the difficulty to be overcome. |
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The article concluded speculatively that the "... hydraulic telegraph may supersede the semaphore and the galvanic telegraph".
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