The Chappe telegraph from the French Revolution to Napoleon’s Empire. Communication from war to peace / Il telegrafo Chappe dalla Rivoluzione Francese all’Impero di Napoleone. La comunicazione dalla guerra alla pace

The founding idea of the volume was born from a conference held in Alessandria in 1995. A research shared between Italy and France, but also extended to other European Countries. The initiative was born to deepen the studies on the optical telegraph, invented at the end of the 18th century by the French abbot Claude Chappe: a brilliant and, at the time, innovative technology of distance communication, based on the visual use of the territory, which transmitted messages in code, scientifically encrypted. The work presents the results of bibliographical–documentary surveys (with research in specialist archives), crossed with examples on the European territory, in which the Chappe telegraph machines were installed using transmission network systems. In the scientific project, three of the main objectives indispensable for the quality of research are applied and verified here: internationality, interdisciplinary integration and innovation.