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Before there were phones, or even electricity, how did people communicate over long distances?

Primitive man used smoke signals to tell hunting parties about the movement of game. The ancient Greeks flashed coded messages during battles by using mirrors to reflect the sun. Carrier pigeons have been used by many cultures to relay messages.

In the jungle where thick forests would prevent clear sight of smoke signals or flashes of light, drums were used to beat out a message to villages down the line. On the sea, where you can see for miles, navies used coded flags to signal news to other ships. To do the same on land would require high vantage points such as hills, towers or for this story, rooftops.

In 1791, the two teenage Chappe brothers were going to different schools in France. The schools were some distance apart, but visible to each other. After acquiring permission, the boys created a signaling system to send messages to one another. They set up a pole with moveable arms on each school rooftop. The different positions of the arms represented the different letters of the alphabet. This signaling system became known as a semaphore system from the Greek words semameaning signal and phoros, meaning carrying.

The semaphores worked so well that Napoleon encouraged using semaphore signaling stations to create a network covering all the main cities of France. About 15 characters per minute could be transmitted and code books were developed so that whole sentences could be represented by just a few arm positions on the pole. Soon the semaphore spread to Italy, Germany and Russia and thousands were employed manning the stations. It was a revolution in communication. Not bad for two high school boys!