Oldest saucy messages sent by telegraph found in Parisien private archives, might explain rapid Morse code acceleration in 1840's

A surprise find among love letters hidden in a Parisien attic for almost two centuries sheds new light on how Morse code and the electric telegraph triumphed over competing communication technologies at the dawn of modern telecom.

The quiet part you're not supposed to say out loud: raunchy content accelerates multimedia technology faster than anything else. Most recently VR and streaming, before then image scanning, JPEG codecs and VHS. Any tech that gets a dirty message across at higher fidelity ... wins.

The Paris library archivist opens a small pink box and shows us the rolls of tickertape inside. She carefully unrolls one and explains, "These give une grandiose insight into the amour between young Aubèr & Gine Pêchemouillée, the great-great-grandparents of the gentille lady who donated them because it was all a bit too cringe for her. To be fair, most of these strips are from Aubèr and quite explicit in describing his ████ ███ curly ███."

Few know that mid-1800s France had a perfectly operating long distance communication system, the Chappe optical telegraph. But it relied on visual signposting, which meant anyone close by could easily decode the message. Wholly unsuitable for messaging ██ █ ██ to a loved one. Alternatives like pigeons could land in a neighbours window sill, making them equally unfit for expressing █████ ██ deep ███ acts. But the introduction of the electrical telegraph and Morse code guaranteed privacy between sender and receiver, making it perfect for ███ and █████ ██ and hard ██.

The archivist pulls a small sheet out of the box with a dozen ticker tape strips glued onto its surface. "Regarde, ceci might even be the earliest form of ASCII-art in existence! Individually, the strips make no sense. But aligned like this, les petite dots clearly show a picture of a massive ████ and ████ in a ██ ██. Clearly Aubèr was a monsieur of good standing!"

One can only wonder how the French and their vive la difference attitude managed to lose the upper hand with Minitel to a TCP/IP network invented by a British scientist.

#France #Telegraph #Sauce

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