The potentially earliest written model of a telegraph actually involved bells as well. After the anonymous author (C.M) first suggestion of small pieces of paper with letters written on them jumping up, via static electricity to tiny electrified balls as the sender manually electrifies the wires, one for each letter, and then waits a bit to allow the slips of paper to flutter back down one by one as the remote observer diligently records what letters hit their balls in what order, he suggests the following, from Scots Magazine, 1753:
"If anybody should think this way tiresome, let him, instead of the balls, suspend a range of bells from the roof, equal in number to the letters the alphabet, gradually decreasing in size from the bell A to Z; and from the horizontal wires let there be another set reaching to the several bells; from the horizontal wire A to the bell A, another from the horizontal wire B to the bell B, etc. Then let him who begins the discourse bring the wires in contact with the barrel, as before; and the electric spark, breaking on bells of different size, will inform his correspondent by the sound what wires have been touched: and thus, by some practice, they may come to understand the language of the chimes in whole words, without being put to the trouble of noting down every letter."
The first documented successful message by wire was 20 years later although there was no independent observer. It took about 55 years from the time of this article until one was publicly demonstrated.
Many people claimed they were working on it, such as in this 1773 love letter by Genevan Physician named Louis Odier:
"I shall amuse you, perhaps, in telling you that I have in my head certain experiments by which to enter into conversation with the
emperor of Mogol, or of China, the English, the French, or any other
people of Europe, in a way that, without inconveniencing yourself,
you may intercommunicate all that you wish, at a distance of four or
five thousand leagues in less than half an hour! Will that suffice
you for glory. There is nothing more real. Whatever be the course
of those experiments, they must necessarily lead to some grand
discovery; but I have not the courage to undertake them this winter."
If anyone is really interested in this kind of thing, I recommend picking up a copy of "The Story of Telecommunications" by George P. Oslin, which is full of obscure communication history details like this.
I wrote some articles on this stuff, had a short-lived podcast. Still, to this day, the lowest traffic writing and production I've ever done, by at least 2 orders of magnitude, probably 3.
Unlikely. Didn't bother keeping up with any of the hosting fees and never became popular enough to be archived.
It wasn't popular for the same reason you don't see people reading some doctoral thesis at the coffee shop.
Jean-Antoine Nollet's 200 monk experiment, Benjamin Franklin's electrified wine goblins for party-goers, Stephen Gray's flying boy or the Flamsteed Newton debate with the bonfires of the royal observatory star maps that disagreed with Newton's celestial models (Historia Coelestis Britannica)... The reason they aren't well known is because nobody is interested in knowing them.
Personally I'd watch a whole Netflix series, say, on Turgot making his isometric map of Paris and John Rocque's copy of the idea for London but I've found out how absurdly unusual that is. People were able to just wander through the nobility's homes by order of the king and into their gardens taking measurements and recording things like trees and sculptures. Methods of land survey, still in use today, were developed to construct this map of 1730s Paris
Oh I forgot to mention my favorite 18th century experiment which used a plumb bob, like on a pendulum, and the gravitational pull of a mountain in Scotland to estimate the mass and size of the earth
Many surveying expeditions had cartographical errors attempting to draw straight lines across vast distances due to this phenomena when they were passing the various because of their gravitational pull. These surveys had to be done at night because they relied on the stars to guide them and used the gravity of the perpendicular plumb to go straight. The pull of the mountains were not accounted for.
It also disproved Hollow Earth theory, which at the time had a number of notable supporters, such as Edmond Halley, who to go back, was a friend of Newton's and plausibly copied Flamsteed's work on the famous comet.
Flamsteed was really protective and didn't like Halley so it's hard to suss out the reality. He made the calculations predicting the return but viewed them as property of the observatory being made during his employment there. Haley, who had access to the work, on the other hand, publicized his calculations and was not protective. Did he independently derive them? Haley claims he didn't know about the work, Flamsteed says otherwise. Who knows? +1 for open access I guess
"If anybody should think this way tiresome, let him, instead of the balls, suspend a range of bells from the roof, equal in number to the letters the alphabet, gradually decreasing in size from the bell A to Z; and from the horizontal wires let there be another set reaching to the several bells; from the horizontal wire A to the bell A, another from the horizontal wire B to the bell B, etc. Then let him who begins the discourse bring the wires in contact with the barrel, as before; and the electric spark, breaking on bells of different size, will inform his correspondent by the sound what wires have been touched: and thus, by some practice, they may come to understand the language of the chimes in whole words, without being put to the trouble of noting down every letter."
The first documented successful message by wire was 20 years later although there was no independent observer. It took about 55 years from the time of this article until one was publicly demonstrated.
Many people claimed they were working on it, such as in this 1773 love letter by Genevan Physician named Louis Odier:
"I shall amuse you, perhaps, in telling you that I have in my head certain experiments by which to enter into conversation with the emperor of Mogol, or of China, the English, the French, or any other people of Europe, in a way that, without inconveniencing yourself, you may intercommunicate all that you wish, at a distance of four or five thousand leagues in less than half an hour! Will that suffice you for glory. There is nothing more real. Whatever be the course of those experiments, they must necessarily lead to some grand discovery; but I have not the courage to undertake them this winter."
Communication at a distance was "time machine"/"fountain of youth" technology up until the 1800s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathetic_alphabet was a mystical occult version from the 1600s.